The Pearl Sitters
by miknnik
Summary: Rick and A.J.'s vacation plan hits a snag.
1. Chapter 1

Lugging a heavy backpack, Rick Simon took the last few steps to reach the crest of the hill he and his brother had been climbing for the last hour or so and scanned the area below—and he cussed under his breath.

There was nothing but the wilderness as far was his eyes could see.

"Oh, great! This is just great! Where's the lodge we're supposed to be at, Rick?" A.J. asked sarcastically catching up with his brother. He had been bitterly complaining about the whole thing all the way up the hill.

"Hey, put a cork in it! I can't focus when you're whining." Rick snapped irritably like his dog, Marlowe, would at a pesky fly.

"Focus? To do what? Meander aimlessly in the middle of nowhere, huh? It may be highly entertaining for you, but this is not my idea of dream vacation!" A.J. was nowhere near done complaining. "This is it—this is absolutely the last time I let you talk me into taking a vacation together."

"I enjoy being lost as much as you do, all right? But it's not entirely my fault—it was just a string of bad luck," said Rick in his own defense.

"Bad luck? Oh no, no, no. Getting hit by lightning is bad luck, or, getting involved in a train wreck, _or_, having an older brother like you, which is more or less the combination of a lightning strike and a train wreck, but you can't blame the situation we're in solely on bad luck. We're hopelessly lost because of your unpreparedness: you didn't bring the area map, you refused to ask for directions at the last gas station where you forgot to fill the gas can…"

And so A.J.'s nagging went on as the sun started to dip below the horizon. Although Rick would never say it aloud, this was not his idea of dream vacation either. What he had been envisioning was a simple but comfortable room at the lodge, along with long hikes and fishing trips to the pristine rivers and lakes in the lush forest.

Instead, he was staring at a strong likelihood of spending a night in the unfamiliar woods without a tent and a sleeping bag while trying to tune out his cranky brother's bellyache. When his Power Wagon had run out of gas, the brothers had hiked up the hill to have a better view of the area, and they had had enough sense to bring their backpacks with provisions. But it was getting dark, and it was unwise to try to go back to the truck if you didn't want to get lost on the way back.

Resigned, Rick sighed and took a quick look around to find a suitable spot to camp out. Just when he was thinking about gathering dry leaves to build a makeshift bed, he caught something in his peripheral vision.

"A.J.?" He cut off his brother's whining in midstream. "Looks like there's a cabin over there."

"Really? Where?" A.J. perked up a little bit with a prospect of spending a night indoors. He squinted in the diminishing daylight to see what was beyond a copse of trees Rick was pointing at. "That doesn't look like much."

"I'd say any shelter is better than sleeping without a tent in the forest where bears and cougars and coyotes are known to roam."

A.J. couldn't argue with that, so they forged ahead, hacking away the tangled mess of thickets and brambles to make a shortcut to the cabin. By the time they got to the clearing where the cabin stood, the darkness had fallen. They had literally worked up a sweat making a new trail to get there. With the temperature rapidly falling, the night breeze on the mountain was a little too cool for their liking, making them shiver.

The cabin was not much more than a lean-to and had not been maintained well, but that did not stop Rick from reaching for the door handle eagerly.

"Wait a minute." A.J. put his hand on his arm. "Shouldn't we knock first?"

"You gotta be kidding," Rick was incredulous. "It's obviously abandoned. And there's no light or sound coming from inside."

Nevertheless, he knocked on the door so that A.J. would have one less thing to complain about. As expected, no one answered the door.

"There, happy? Can I go in now?"

Before A.J. could answer, Rick walked in with a flashlight on. The interior was just as poor in condition as the exterior of the structure. One of the two rooms had a plain table—apparently hand-built—and a couple of chairs. The other served as a bedroom with a cot and a nightstand.

A.J. made a beeline for the cot, which was too small to sleep two adults comfortably, and sat down on it with a sigh of relief, setting his backpack down on the floor. Till then, Rick had been willing to let his brother sleep on the cot to make up for bungling their vacation plan, but seeing him claim it like it was his birthright got on his nerves.

"Hey, who said you could have the bed?"

A.J.'s head snapped up. He had been planning to suggest they take turns to sleep on it although he had been hoping Rick would offer it to him as a form of apology for the inconvenience—to put it mildly—he had caused.

"Then what do you suggest we do to settle this matter?" His tone was that of a dare, which made his sibling even more irked.

"Coin toss." Rick stared him down as if to challenge him.

"Fine!" A.J. scooted off the cot and stood up, his arms crossed over his chest. "You toss, I call."

"Fine!"

The brothers glared at each other for a few seconds.

Rick reached into his pants pocket to fish out a coin. After a brief moment, he asked awkwardly, "Got a quarter with ya?"

A.J. threw him his I-can't-believe-what-I'm-hearing look but produced a quarter from his coin pocket and tossed it to him. "Here, keep it."

Rick caught and flipped it without another word. When he slapped the coin on the back of his left hand, A.J. immediately called, "Heads."

Rick lifted his right hand slightly so that only he could take a peek and grinned.

"You lose." He uncovered his hand to show which side the quarter lay on. "You sure you don't wanna get your quarter back?" He rubbed it in.

A.J. was usually a gracious loser, but the coin flip and its outcome was the last straw after spending a day where everything that could go wrong had gone disastrous. He picked up his backpack and stormed out of the bedroom.

After that, they hardly spoke. They had a handful of dried food, Gatorade with a chaser of water in their separate rooms before turning in.

Rick was no longer mad at A.J.; he was keenly aware it was his fault that they were lost. He did not care for his brother's constant nagging, but he hated a silent treatment even more. He quietly watched A.J. get ready for bedding down by rolling up an extra T-shirt for a pillow and wearing a warm jacket to ward off a chill in the air.

"Good night, A.J."

When his clumsy attempt to offer an olive branch was met with an unintelligible mumble, festering resentment reared its ugly head.

_If you keep acting like a spoiled brat, you deserve to sleep on the floor all night_.

Rick flopped down on the cot with a jacket over his body, getting angry again with A.J. and himself.


	2. Chapter 2

In the dead of night, Rick woke up because he was being squished against the wall by another body on the small cot.

"Get off my bed, A.J. You lost the coin toss." He snarled trying to sound menacing, but his face was pressed against the wall of logs making his voice muffled and ineffectual.

A.J. turned in his sleep, and his arm flung out landing on Rick's torso.

Pushing the arm away, Rick sat up on the creaky cot. "Hey, knock it off!"

Only then was he able to see the sleeping form next to him could not be A.J.; the mystery bedmate was about six-four, well over two hundred.

"Aaaarrgh!" He could not help letting out a high-pitched, unmanly scream though it might not be the wisest thing in this situation.

The man next to him abruptly sat up and screamed, "AIEEE!" His shriek was even higher than Rick's.

As the screaming match continued, A.J. stumbled into the room with a flashlight rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Hey, what's going on, Rick?"

When the beam from the flashlight spotlighted the stranger on the bed, he and A.J. cried out simultaneously.

"AIEEE!"

"Ach!"

By then Rick had fled to the far corner of the room and was pressing his back against the wall trying to put as much distance from the stranger as physically possible.

"What the hell's goin' on?"

Reacting to the voice coming from behind, A.J. whipped around and saw a tall, skinny old man rushing into the cabin with a shotgun.

"Agh!" His hands went skyward. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

"P.J., you okay?"

Before the old man could finish the sentence, Rick's former bedmate was attacking him—or, so it seemed. It took Rick and A.J. a moment or two to realize he was clinging to the other man like a scared little kid.

The old man repositioned his shotgun to aim at A.J., who was unfortunately standing in front of him. "What the hell did you do to my daughter, boy?"

"Your…?" A.J. swallowed the rest as he heard the sound of the shotgun hammer cocking. "Nothing! I was sleeping in the other room when he…your daughter started screaming!"

"Is that true, girl?"

When P.J. nodded, the old man aimed the shotgun at Rick. "Then you must be the one who's done somethin' to my girl."

"I didn't do anything!" Rick declared. "I was in bed just sleeping…"

A.J. saw a drastic change in the old man's facial expression that he did not like and had barely enough time to grab the barrel of the shotgun to jerk it upward before he blasted it off.

P.J. jumped into action to help her father. She slugged A.J. so hard he wound up on the floor. She certainly did not hit like a girl, he painfully observed.

"Alone! I was sleeping alone!" Rick also hit the floor, his head cradled in his arms. "We got lost on our way to our lodge! We didn't know you own this cabin—we thought it was abandoned! When we turned in, I was sleeping alone! I'm telling you the truth, I swear!"

"That right, P.J.?"

She nodded her head again and pointed her finger at Rick, "I saw him sleeping in bed and thought it was you. I just wanted to snuggle 'cause I was really scared and didn't want to be alone."

It was almost surreal to hear her talk girlishly in her contralto voice. Long, dark hair tumbled out of the stocking cap when she took it off.

"Why didn'tcha say so in the first place?" The old man seemed to have somewhat calmed down but did not lower his shotgun.

Just when Rick and A.J. thought it was safe to get back up on their feet, two more men barged into the cabin. They were half a foot taller than the old man and built like a couple of heavyweight wrestlers.

"Hey, what were you shooting at, Pop?" asked one of them.

"Did you find the guy that's been botherin' P.J.?" asked the other one.

When they saw the Simon brothers on their hands and knees on the floor, they did not wait for their father to answer and descended on them.

Tweedledum, with a flashlight in one hand, yanked A.J. up from the floor with the other and started shaking him like a dog with a chew toy. Tweedledee pounced on Rick' back and started banging his head on the hardwood floor.

"Vance! Vaughn! Stop it! They're just strangers who got lost in the woods!" P.J. yelled at her brothers. "Besides, they don't look like the man who's been harassing me."

"Oh…" Tweedledum dropped A.J. on the floor unceremoniously.

Tweedledee lifted his crushing weight off Rick's back. "Then how come Pop fired a shot?"

"It was a slight misunderstanding," said P.J., who sounded embarrassed about the situation.

Pop glared down at the Simons, who were still hugging the floor, not yet ready to get intimately acquainted with the other fraternal pair. "Misunderstandin' or not, you're still trespassers and haven't told us who you are."

A.J. cautiously sat up and asked, "May I show you my ID?"

Seeing Pop nod his head, he slowly took out his wallet and offered it to him.

"Andrew Simon from San Diego..." Pop read the personal information on the driver's license.

A.J. nodded. "Yes, and that's my brother, Rick, over there."

"You're a private eye?" asked Pop looking at A.J.'s PI license.

"Yeah, we run a private investigation outfit down in San Diego," said Rick, rubbing the sore spot on the head.

"And you got lost hiking around here? You must be real lousy investigators," said Tweedledee, making his twin brother chuckle.

Rick and A.J. bit their tongues so as not to make any smart-alecky remarks under the circumstances. Their self-preservation instinct told them only one of the twins could easily beat both of them to a pulp.

"We're very sorry that we trespassed your property, but it was getting dark and cold, and we didn't have…"

"Hush, boy. I'm thinkin'," Pop cut A.J. off. After a few moments, he tossed the wallet back to him and asked, "You going to stay at Juniper Lodge?"

"Yes, sir," replied A.J.

"Man, that's on the other side of the mountain. You really are lost," smirked Tweedledum.

Pop shushed his son and asked A.J., "Where's your car?"

"At the bottom of the hill and out of gas."

Pop's sons started snickering again hearing the Simons' compounded misfortune.

The old man nodded absentmindedly. "All right, tell you what—we'll give you some gas and show you the way to the lodge."

"And what do we have to do in return?" asked Rick suspiciously.

"Oh, not much," answered Pop grinning. "I want you to be my daughter's bodyguards for a while. Till you go back to San Diego, or till she goes back to San Francisco; whichever comes first."

"What?" Rick could not help asking. "Why?"

"Someone's been stalkin' her for the last few days—ever since she got here for the holidays."

"Stalking? Have you seen him before? Is he from around here? And what exactly did he do to your…daughter?"

"I haven't seen 'im, but P.J. says she don't know 'im. He followed her to our place and trashed it. He then tried to kidnap her."

"Well, isn't that…"

A.J. gave his brother a warning look so he wouldn't make any disparaging remark on the stalking victim.

"…the local sheriff's duty?" Rick concluded. "Have you reported it to him?"

"'Course we did, but we have only one sheriff and two deputies to cover thousands of square miles, and it's a huntin' season, so they're too busy to keep an eye on her all the time."

"What if we refused to take up your offer?" asked Rick cautiously.

"Well," drawled Pop, scratching the back of his head. "I can't force you to do somethin' you don't want. In that case, I'll ask you to get the hell off my property and do nothin' else. And you'll stay lost, I reckon."

"We'll take it!" A.J. was desperate and pounced on the offer. "We're more than happy to be of your service, sir."

This time, Rick shot a glare of annoyance at his brother. He knew they had no choice but to accept the new assignment, but it didn't mean they'd have to kiss the old man's skinny heiny. A.J. was shamelessly submissive and acting like a lost kid at the fair, ready to cling to anyone offering a helping hand.

When Pop nodded his head, his sons picked up the Simon brothers from the floor with ease as though they were lifting a gym bag.

"You boys hafta ride in the back of my pickup with Vance. P.J., you ride in the cab with me, and Vaughn, you take your truck home and wait for us to come back," ordered Pop. He also informed the Simons, "I'll give you a coupla cans of gas at the bottom the hill, but I'll hitch your car to mine and tow it to the lodge."

It was a nice gesture on the surface, but Rick figured it was to keep him and A.J. from hightailing.

"Um, we have only one room reserved." He hesitantly informed the old man. "Just how many of you are planning to stay there?"

"Oh, just P.J."

Rick remembered the paralyzing fear he had felt when he had found her lying next to him and shuddered. "Our room doesn't have a separate bedroom—it's just a double-occupancy room."

Pop shrugged. "She grew up with her two brothers, so she don't mind sharin' a room with you. She's seen 'em naked." He cackled.

Mortified beyond words, P.J. groaned, as did the Simons.

"But if you lay a finger on her, so help me God…" Glowering, Pop left the sentence unfinished to let them fill in the blanks.

"That won't happen, I can assure you! We're committed and reputable professionals, sir!" squawked A.J. as Tweedledum shook him a few times for good measure to drive the point home.

Rick stole a quick peek at P.J. and was more concerned about his own safety, and in his opinion, so should A.J. After all, most women in general found his brother much more desirable than he.

"Good. Don't you forget that," said Pop. "'Cause I know who you are and where you live, Andrew Simon."

When he showed him a piece of ID, A.J. quickly checked his wallet and found his driver's license missing.

"I'll give this back to you before you go home." Pop grinned. "Now that we understand each other, let's get outa here."

He led his brood and the city slickers out of the cabin to his pickup with a swagger.


	3. Chapter 3

It was almost three in the morning when Rick and A.J. finally arrived at Juniper Lodge. They walked in with P.J. in tow and found the lobby and the reception area empty. Rick rang the bell on the front desk counter for a couple of minutes to rouse the clerk out of bed.

Eager to go back to sleep, the clerk checked in the brothers at the record speed and disappeared into the backroom before they left the counter.

P.J. was waiting for them at the top of the stairs to be discreet partly because she was not a registered guest, but the most salient reason was that she was too embarrassed to be seen checking into a room with two men at an ungodly hour.

When they walked into their assigned room, Rick went straight to the closet to get an extra pillow and a blanket.

"You can have one of the beds, A.J. I'll sleep in the tub." He announced, giving his brother no time to respond then asked P.J., "Wanna use the bathroom before we all turn in?"

All of them were exhausted and ready to hit the sack. Watching Rick disappear into the bathroom and shut the door with a click, P.J. heaved a heavy sigh.

"He hates me."

Unwavering conviction in her statement surprised A.J., who was trying to burrow under the cover on his bed. "No, he doesn't. Why do you say that?"

She shrugged. "Woman's intuition. And I can't blame you for resenting the fact that my father, in effect, blackmailed you two to keep an eye on me and ruined your vacation."

"Believe me, our vacation had already been ruined before we met, thanks to my brother." A.J. grinned. "So, don't worry about it, Miss…"

"My last name is Bisser, but please call me Pearl."

"Oh? Not P.J.?"

"Only to my family and the town residents. P.J. Bisser doesn't sound too professional or feminine. Pearl was my mother and grandmother's name too, and since they're no longer with us, I'd like to keep it in their memory. So, I'm billed as Pearl J. Bisser."

"Billed? What do you do in San Francisco? Are you a performing artist?"

"I'm in the San Francisco Opera's resident artist program." She answered with a shy smile.

"Really? Wow!" A.J. was totally blown away. "Last year, I saw its _Don Giovanni_ production—it was sublime, and I was truly delighted to see the authentic, traditional staging. Were you in it?"

She nodded. "Just small parts in crowd and chorus scenes. Among others, I was one of the peasants celebrating Zerlina and Masetto's wedding."

"What about this year?"

"I was the understudy for the mezzo playing the title role, _Tosca_, but, alas, I didn't get called on to sub."

"You know what?" A.J. said with a grin. "I just realized that your name sounds a lot like…"

"The Pearl Fishers? Yes, it's an ongoing joke among our group. That's why I use my middle initial for my stage name to make it sound a little different. But who knows, this could be the one and only opportunity for me to have two men lusting after me, just like Leila."

Lying in the bathtub, Rick could hear A.J. and their charge carrying a very lively conversation liberally punctuated with laughter, and he felt like he was being betrayed by his own flesh and blood. It was like making friends with a mortal enemy.

He was angry with Pop for taking advantage of the compromising situation and forcing him and A.J. to baby-sit his daughter.

_He can force us to work for him, but he can't make me like it!_

Rick was planning to stay mad at Pop and his clan no matter what, but eventually fatigue took over, and he drifted off.

Falling into a troubled sleep, he had a series of disturbing dreams, in one of which, he was chased by P.J. wearing an old-fashioned dress and a Viking helmet with horns on some theater stage. She was also singing some highfalutin song in a foreign tongue at the top of her lungs. Pop and his sons were egging her on right behind her while A.J. was watching and enjoying the spectacle onstage in the empty theater eating popcorn.

Just when he thought he was going to make it to stage left, he tripped. As he started to fall, a strong hand grasped his arm.

"Gah!"

He jerked awake to find himself in the bathtub and his brother looking into his face.

"Wake up, Rick. Pearl would like to freshen up." A.J. announced cheerfully, letting go of Rick's arm. "Up and at 'em!"

As the brothers exited the bathroom, P.J. a.k.a. Pearl went in with a change of clothes, offering a warm "good morning" to Rick. His garbled snarl in return sounded like mornin'—maybe.

When the bathroom door closed behind them, A.J. admonished his older brother, "That was really rude. Why are you so grumpy, Rick? May I remind you that one of our service mottos is, 'be courteous'?"

"Well, excuse me for not minding my manners," growled Rick. "But we're not getting paid for this work. And I didn't get to sleep in bed like you did. I could hardly sleep in the tub."

"That's no excuse for acting like a tired, cranky three-year-old, Rick," said A.J. shaking his head. "Pearl and I didn't sleep at all. We were up all night, but we're doing just fine."

A look of horror on Rick's face told A.J. that his brother had misconstrued what he had told him.

"We were up_ talking_ all night." A.J. informed Rick with a grin. "She's a remarkable lady, Rick. You should get to know her better."

"Sheesh. Just listen to yourself. You sound like you want to be her boyfriend or worse," muttered Rick.

"Actually, I would love to have a dinner date with her," said A.J. with a smile making his brother shudder. "But she only has eyes for you."

Rick bristled with displeasure, "That's not funny." He narrowed his eyes glaring at A.J.

"That's because I'm not trying to be. She's clearly smitten with you for some inexplicable reason."

"You're just imagining things."

"I am not. She kept asking me about you like a hopelessly lovesick high school girl: your likes, dislikes, hobbies, old girlfriends, misspent youth…like one of those girls who would scribble 'Mrs. Richard Simon' all over the cover of her binder and dot every 'i' with a tiny heart." A.J. drew a heart with his index finger in the air.

"But why?" Rick looked like a man who had been handed down a bum rap.

"Why indeed. I can't fathom what she's seeing in you, and I've known you all my life," agreed A.J. wholeheartedly. "Maybe she has a mild case of Electra complex."

"Uh… Come again?" asked Rick, puzzled by his brother's remark.

"Electra complex. It's named after one of the daughters of Agamemnon in Greek mythology. When she and her brother, Orestes, found out their mother and her lover had murdered their father…"

Rick slapped his splayed hand on A.J.'s entire face to shut him up. "Hey, did I ask for a book report?"

"Boy, you really are grumpy this morning." A.J. brushed his hand aside so he would be able to speak again. "If you must know, the Electra complex is the female counterpart of the Oedipus complex, and what it means is a girl's sexual attraction to her father."

"That's sick!"

"What's acceptable as the norm greatly varies from society to society. Read up on ancient Greek and Egyptian histories, Rick."

"But I'm not her pop. And we hardly know each other." Before A.J. could wisecrack, he added, "And I wanna keep it that way."

"You know some women gravitate towards men who resemble their fathers or share similar traits."

"I don't look like Pop!" Rick felt insulted.

"I'm not talking about the looks per se, but think about it—you and Pop are tall, skinny, pushy, balding…" Remembering what Pearl had said, A.J. smiled. "And his name is Victor, you know, Vic for short, which, of course, rhymes with Rick."

A.J. chuckled at a panic-stricken look on his brother's face. "Relax, Rick. Pearl is too civilized to hit on you, or pursue you aggressively. As a matter of fact, she graciously offered to be our tour guide because she feels guilty that she's ruining our vacation."

"I don't need her to show me around," said Rick adamantly.

"Oh, come on, Rick. We have to let her tag along to keep an eye on her anyway, and she grew up here and knows all the good fishing spots."

Rick pursed his lips considering the available options. "I don't wanna go fishing."

Exasperated, A.J. groaned. "Then what do you suggest we do for the next several days? I don't wanna get cooped up in this room with you moping around like a sullen teenager."

"And I don't wanna get stuck in here with you whining like a sniveling little kid," Rick shot back. "What I wanna do is find the creep that's been stalking her."

Rick was hoping to find the stalker and wash his hands with this new assignment ASAP, but he knew something was amiss as soon as he saw his brother's face breaking into a huge grin.

"Oh, Rick! You're so sweet!"

Rick winced as he heard Pearl's voice coming from behind. She bounded out of the bathroom and threw her arms around him.

"Hey, cut it out!" He tried to wiggle out of a tight bear hug but couldn't. She was alarmingly strong. "I'm not your knight in shining armor! I have my own selfish reason!"

She finally let him loose after a few moments. "And you're so modest!" No matter what Rick said, she would put a positive spin on it. "I knew you're decent under that gruff exterior. A.J.'s right—you just don't know how nice a person you really are."

_What exactly did he tell her about me? _

Rick looked daggers at his brother, but he only smiled trying to look like a selfless martyr.

"This lodge's restaurant has a great breakfast menu." Pearl was oblivious to the brothers' non-verbal communication. "Let's have a bite to eat before heading out—my treat!"

Rick was about to say he was not hungry, but his traitorous stomach growled at the mention of food. "I can pay for my own meal." He mumbled.

"I'm not going to let you and A.J. do that! You agreed to look after me under duress, but that doesn't mean you don't get paid. I'll pay for your service and any expenses and throw in a bonus if you catch the man who's been harassing me. In other words, I'll be your client." Hands on her hips, she declared, "Now, let's have breakfast. I don't want you to work on an empty stomach!"

Pearl exuberantly marched out of the room looking forward to spending the next several days with her newfound idol.

As he walked across the room to the door, Rick slapped the back of his brother's head.

"Hey!" A.J. cried out in surprise. "What'd you do that for?"

"Don't say anything nice when she asks about me again," was Rick's parting remark.

"That shouldn't be too difficult." A.J. muttered to himself closing the door behind him.

_**S&S S&S**_

Rick reluctantly admitted to himself Pearl was right about the food they served at the lodge's restaurant. It was authentic country cooking with fluffy buttermilk pancakes, real maple syrup, crispy bacon, succulent sausage, golden hash browns…

Although he did not want to look like he was really enjoying the meal, before he knew, he had polished off everything on his plate.

From the corner of his eye, A.J. saw his brother looking at his plate hungrily and tried to keep a straight face. "Want to finish this, Rick? I'm full." He pushed it towards Rick's.

"Well, Mom always says we should appreciate the food on our plates," said Rick while stabbing a couple of links of sausage that A.J. had left untouched with his fork.

He pretended not to notice Pearl's approving look on her face. He obviously could do no wrong in her eyes.

"So, you're absolutely sure it's not your rival in San Francisco, who's trying to intimidate or harm you?" A.J. asked her again to wrap up the Q&A for now.

"Yes, I'm sure. I told you, A.J., I have no rivals or foes to speak of and haven't had any major role in any of the productions. As a matter of fact, I could become a suspect in a plot to maim a diva to get her role if there was one," she sighed but brightened up as soon as her eyes fell on Rick. "Would you like some more coffee, Rick?" asked she sweetly as he swallowed the last bite of the sausage.

"No, I don't wanna waste any more time. Let's get it started."

Rick abruptly pushed himself away from the table, stood up and strode out of the restaurant without bothering to see if Pearl and A.J. were ready to leave. She tossed a generous amount of gratuity on the table in a hurry and followed him like an overzealous groupie.

Somehow, A.J. felt like a ten-year-old tagging along with his big brother and his date to a drive-in theater all over again. Being a fly on the wall had been highly educational, he recalled, grinning. He had learned quite a bit as to what _not_ to do or say under certain circumstances.

_Maybe I'll be able to get something out of this vacation after all. _

He left the restaurant whistling a tune from _L'elisir d'amore_.

When A.J. got to the parking lot, Rick was trying to talk Pearl into driving his pickup to the site where she had first seen the stalker.

"It's faster that way 'cause you don't have to give me the directions." A.J. heard his brother saying to Pearl, but he knew the real reason. With Pearl driving, Rick wanted to use him as a buffer in the middle so he wouldn't have to sit next to her.

"Is it automatic?" asked Pearl, doing her best to please him.

"Nope, it's a stick shift," announced A.J. with a grin.

"Oh… Sorry, Rick. I can't drive a stick shift." She said sheepishly.

"Don't worry about it, Pearl," said A.J. "Rick should drive his own truck. It has lots of quirks and flaws and drives erratically from time to time, kind of like its owner—it takes some getting used to."

Rick gave his brother a nasty glare but couldn't tell him off as he had instructed him not to say anything nice about him in her presence. Basically, he had given him carte blanche to badmouth him. He felt like kicking himself.

Muttering something under his breath, he climbed into the cab without offering to help Pearl get in. As expected, she sat snugly next to him and prattled on and on for half an hour, all the way to their destination.


	4. Chapter 4

They arrived at one of the lakes in the area not a minute too soon. By then, Rick's head was about to explode with information overload. He had not been able to tune out his new client because she had been giving him the driving directions—among other things. _Make that among lots of other things._

A.J. jumped out of the cab and helped Pearl get out of the vehicle marveling at the beauty of the place that seemed untouched by civilization.

The parking area was not paved but leveled with packed dirt. Rick took in the sight and secretly wished he had brought a fishing rod.

"As I said, this is one of my favorite places. It does have an official name, but the townsfolk just call it the Lake." He heard Pearl picking up where she'd left off. "I came here the other day just to get away from my family. They can be overbearing sometimes, you know."

The brothers remained silent for some tactical reasons.

"They mean well—they're just being protective of me because I'm the youngest and the only girl in the family." She saw a hint of impatience on Rick's face and hurried along. "Anyway, when I got out of my car, a stranger was getting into his. I said 'hi' to him like we always do around here, but he not only ignored me but looked away as if he'd seen something disgusting," said she indignantly.

"What did he look like? What kind of car was he driving?" asked Rick cutting to the chase.

"Curly auburn hair, blue or green eyes, muscular, clean cut, no facial hair, much better-dressed than the locals. About my height."

"Um, how tall are you, really?" asked Rick with apparent curiosity.

"Six two…" Pearl saw his eyebrow going up and reluctantly told him the truth. "…and five quarters."

"Any striking features? Scars, bruises, birthmarks?" asked A.J. resuming the questioning.

She shook her head. "No, but I can recognize him if I see him again. And he was driving a Chrysler sedan, newer model. Most likely a rental."

"Why do you think it was a rental?" Rick sounded skeptical.

Pearl smiled. "People around here don't drive a nice car if they can afford to buy it because it's next to impossible to maintain it in good condition when you live in the countryside where paved roads are hard to find."

"That means you and your truck can blend right in, Rick." Snickering, A.J. teased his brother.

Rick ostentatiously ignored him and said to Pearl, "What was he doing before he got into his car?"

"He was walking back to his car from that direction," said she, pointing at a trailhead nearby.

"Where's that trail lead?"

"It wraps around the lake. The end of the trail is about a quarter mile east from here. There's a fork on the other side of the lake, and you can trek up a hill to get to a small waterfall." She then added with a giggle. "Kids around here often go there for skinny-dipping."

"Then what happened?" Rick prodded her trying to block a disturbing mental image of teenaged Pearl skinny-dipping.

"I was down at the lake for about an hour. When I returned to my car, I saw him again near the trailhead. He seemed to be looking for something. He then looked up and saw me watching him. I didn't like the way he looked at me, so I left right away."

"Did he follow you to your place?" asked A.J.

"I don't think so. We're not in San Francisco, or San Diego—you can't miss it if someone follows your car around here."

Rick nodded thinking. "He didn't have to follow you to find where you live. All he has to do is run your license plate and get your name and address. If you have a San Francisco address, he can still find where you're staying by your name by checking nearby lodges, motels and the local families in the phone book."

"I was driving my brother's car," Pearl informed the Simons.

"Whoever he is, he believes you've found something he misplaced," said A.J. agreeing with his brother.

"Ergo, the break-in and the attempted kidnapping." Rick concluded. "Since you don't have what he's looking for, finding the missing item may help our investigation."

"You two are doing great! And I feel so safe and secure in your presence," said his adoring fan.

"He almost succeeded in kidnapping me right in front of my family's home, but luckily, my father was at home taking an afternoon nap. When he heard a commotion outside, he came out with his shotgun, scared him away."

"Is that why you and your family decided to spend a night at the cabin?" asked A.J.

"Uh-huh. We went to see the sheriff and reported the incident, but there wasn't much for him to go on. And he was kind of grumpy because he hadn't been able to get in touch with one of his deputies. I was really scared and couldn't sleep at home. What I mean is, the man, whoever he is, knows where I live. I rode with Vance, and Vaughn drove my father to the cabin. I honestly thought it was my father when I saw you lying on the cot, Rick. It was too dark to see clearly."

Rick chuffled at the memory that he would not be able to forget anytime soon.

As usual, A.J. was taking notes, and, when he turned a page of his notebook, his pen fell out of his hand and started rolling down on the ground.

"Oops."

As he turned around to pick it up, a large crow swooped down from out of nowhere and beat him to it. Flying up and away, the winged rascal managed to caw triumphantly though it had the pen in its beak.

"Damn it!" A.J. yelled at it angrily and started chasing the bird.

Rick grabbed his brother's arm and said, "Hey, forget about it—it's just a pen."

A.J. looked him in the eye and said hotly, "No, it's not! That's the fountain pen Dad gave to me."

Rick let him run after the crow knowing nothing could keep him from getting it back. He had had no idea A.J. still had that old thing, but it did not surprise him. Their father had not really given it to A.J. though, he recalled. When he had replaced his old pen with a new one, his brother had pestered him to let him have it.

A.J. spotted the thieving crow roosting in a tall tree. It deposited its latest loot in the nest. It cawed a few times as if to admire its cache of pilfered goods and flew away.

As he was getting ready to climb the tree, A.J. felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," said Rick. "Some birds are attracted to shiny things and known to steal buttons and marbles and stuff, right?"

He could almost see a light bulb go off right above his brother's head.

"Yes, of course. _La gazza ladra_, indeed." Still angry with the larcenous crow, A.J. grinned entertaining the thought of getting even. "I'll confiscate the damn bird's entire collection." He would make it pay dearly for its heinous crime.

Rick saw Pearl coming over as A.J. began climbing the tree.

"Make it quick." He told his brother dreading to be left alone with her.

A.J. needed no prodding from Rick for he was anxious to get his pen back. After a few minutes, the nest was already in sight. He put his foot on a large branch and pulled himself up. Seeing his fountain pen sitting on the rest of junk, he smiled. He scooped up a handful of the crow's treasured baubles and stuffed them in his jacket's pocket after he carefully removed and placed the pen in his breast pocket.

"A.J.!"

Before he could react to Rick's warning, the crow suddenly appeared and dipped like a dive-bomber and pecked on his head.

"Yow!"

He took a swipe at the winged bandit, but it saw it coming and attacked his hand this time. It was brazen and relentless.

In desperation, A.J. broke off a small branch and attempted to whack the bird with it as it flew closer once again. It veered to the right with a cry of surprise. It tried to resume its aerial attack but eventually gave up on it after a couple of near misses with the branch he was wielding. It let out a baleful caw and took off.

"Ha!" A.J. smiled a vindictive smile but kept a close eye on the kleptomaniacal assailant just to be sure it wouldn't come back.

While he was watching the crow's flight, something in the vegetation near the trail caught his eye. As soon as he realized what he was staring at, he could not think of anything else, mesmerized.

Rick had been watching his brother's every move from down below, and his keen PI sixth sense picked up something when A.J. kept staring at one spot in the woods.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

A.J. finally looked away from a pair of legs sticking out of the undergrowth. "Uh…Rick? I think we should call the sheriff."

_**S&S S&S**_

"God Almighty!"

Mark Upham, the local sheriff, cried out when he tilted the head of the body and saw the victim's face, which was blotchy with lividity.

"Anybody you know?" asked Rick.

"That's Roy—my deputy." Upham rubbed his face absentmindedly. "No wonder he didn't report to work."

A.J. stayed behind with Pearl near the trailhead to spare her the unpleasantness but could hear the conversation between the two men.

"Poor guy. He musta tripped and hit his head on a rock when he fell," speculated the sheriff seeing a large rock with dried blood near the body.

Rick stared at him in disbelief. "You gotta be joking. You think this was an accident?"

The younger man's insolent tone made Upham scowl. "I didn't know you're such an expert on this kind of investigation, son." His grin was strained and contemptuous. "Why don't you enlighten me?"

The animosity between them was mutual. Rick could not stand an incompetent lawman; an arrogant and incompetent one was even worse.

Nevertheless, he kept a poker face and shrugged. "When you're walking or running and trip over something, you usually pitch forward 'cause that's the direction your body is leaning. Sure, you could fall backwards if you're moving backwards, or if the ground is slippery, I guess."

The trail was bone-dry.

"Maybe Roy was backing away from something, or someone," said Upham glowering.

Rick had to fight the urge to ask him whether he was dumb or crooked or both. "All right. Suppose you're falling backwards. How do you think you land on the ground? Which part of your body do you think you land on first?"

Upham kept glowering at him without answering the question.

"Unless you have cat-like reflexes, I bet you land on your backside." Rick took a quick glance at the body. "The back of your deputy's head is bashed in as you can see. In order to get that kind of damage, you'd have to fall like a log, or a felled tree in your theory."

The sheriff was getting red in the face. "Maybe he had some medical condition he didn't know about and passed out."

It was becoming increasingly difficult for Rick to keep his temper under control. The tension between them was also mounting as they glared at each other like a couple of bull elk during the rutting season.

Before the situation deteriorated any further, A.J. appeared leading a portly old man with a black satchel and announced, "Sheriff? Dr. Adler is here."

Pearl hung back not wanting to see the body.

"Morning, Mark," greeted the county coroner jovially. "Another hunting accident, is it?"

"No, Scott. It's Roy," said Upham still giving Rick the stink eye.

The coroner's eyes became as big as saucers. "Roy? You mean, Roy Porter? Your deputy? What in the Sam Hill happened?"

"The back of his head is smashed." Upham pointed his chin at Rick. "This hot-shot private eye from San Diego suspects foul play."

The sheriff's derisive tone made Rick clench his teeth, and a vein popped out in his neck. Just when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, he felt a firm hand on his shoulder and heard his brother's calm, even voice.

"Sheriff? If you don't mind, we'd like to go back to our lodge. You have our contact information if you'd like to get in touch with us again."

Upham glanced at A.J.'s guileless face and shrugged. "Sure, we can handle this without any help from some big city PIs." He still sounded hostile. "Why don't you boys run along and enjoy our folk's hospitality? I'll call you if I need to ask you more questions."

A.J. did not appreciate the sheriff's condescending attitude but left the scene quickly leading his brother back to Pearl, who had been patiently waiting perched on a tree stump.

Seeing the brothers approaching, she stood up. "A.J.? Why didn't you tell…?"

A.J. placed his index finger on his lips and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

Once they were back in Rick's Power Wagon, Pearl asked again, "Rick, A.J. Why didn't you tell the sheriff about the stalker lingering near the trail, or that you have something he may have lost? Isn't that a piece of evidence?"

"We don't know it just yet, Pearl, not for sure," said A.J. shaking his head. "Right now, all I know is I have a pocketful of junk the crow amassed."

"But for the sake of argument, let's say the bird picked up something our guy had lost." Rick sat in the driver seat without starting the engine. "If that's the case, the last thing we wanna do is turn over the evidence."

Pearl looked at him quizzically.

"I don't think Upham can break this case, and I'm not saying this because I don't like him personally." Rick suspected the sheriff himself might be involved in this mess and if so, handing over a possible piece of evidence would be like asking a wolf to guard livestock. He thought about telling that to Pearl but decided against it.

A.J. nodded. "There's a strong possibility that the stalker is somehow linked to this murder. And for now, let's assume he is. After listening to the sheriff's crime scene assessment, I'm afraid there's more than a good chance that he will botch the murder investigation even if we turn over what I found in the crow's nest. And if we are to lose a vital piece of evidence, we won't be able to solve our case. What I'm trying to say is, we may not be able to solve our case without cracking the other, and vice versa."

"Who knows, what we got could be just shiny stuff the dumb bird likes to look at and nothing more," continued Rick. "All we're sayin' is, it's not too late to give it to Upham after our initial assessment. We gotta get on with our own investigation first though. You wanna catch the stalker and would-be kidnapper, don't you?"

He started the engine and put his hand on the gearshift.

"Where are we going, Rick?" asked Pearl.

"The nearest town where you can rent a vehicle. Our guy may not be dumb enough to rent a car near the place where he was planning to commit a crime, but it never hurts to check. I drive, you navigate."

"On our way to get there, we can go over the junk in my pocket to see if we have something the stalker lost," said A.J.

Pearl looked at the brothers with renewed enthusiasm and admiration. "We're quite a team, aren't we?" Sitting in the middle, she linked her arms with theirs and pulled both of them closer to her.

"We sure are," affirmed A.J. with a giggle.

_Who's 'we'?_ Rick simply rolled his eyes and kept his mouth shut. As he was about to pull out of the parking area, he heard a distressed cry of a crow and found the delinquent bird perched by its nest.

"Uh-oh. You better watch out, A.J."

"What are you talking about?"

"The crow just found out you took his stuff, and he's not taking it very well to say the least."

"So?" A.J. shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

"A.J., don't take it too lightly," warned Pearl. "Crows are highly intelligent and able to recognize people's facial features. They know how to hold a grudge. And I've seen a single crow calling in reinforcements, dozens of them, and kicked the butt of a red-tailed hawk that was trying to raid its nest."

A.J. smiled at her. "Don't worry about it. My brother and I have handled something much worse than a thief with wings, but thanks for your concern. I'll try to stay away from this place if it makes you feel better."

He stuck his head out of the window and saw the crow staring at the pickup intently.

"'Sir,' said I 'or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore,'" he playfully quoted a line from The Raven by Poe, but on his mind was a different passage of the poem: _And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming._

The way the crow silently stared at him made him uneasy. He was anxious to leave it behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

A.J. emptied his pocket and spread the crow's loot over his lap.

"Eww…" His germ phobia surfaced when he saw some of the items were encrusted with dried droppings. He could not help wiping his hand on his jeans.

Rick glanced at his brother with an impatient look. "Come on, A.J. Let's see what we got."

The first thing A.J. picked up was a crumpled piece of aluminum foil. They were sure it was only junk, but to be sure, A.J. smoothed it out. Finding nothing inside, he put it back in his pocket.

Next was a marble: a Cat's Eye. It was pretty to look at but not much else. There were a couple of buttons. One of them was a flattop, brass kind for jeans and denim jackets. It bore the name of a popular brand, as a matter of fact, too popular to be a clue. The other was a cheap ornamental kind from a women's garment.

"This one looks expensive," muttered A.J., selecting a sterling silver cufflink next. It had a matt black finish and three letters engraved. "A-L-I."

"ALI? The perp's initials maybe?" Taking a sideway glance at the cufflink, Rick wondered aloud. "Or, his name?"

"Or, his wife's name or girlfriend's," said Pearl.

"Or, the manufacturer's initials or the craftsman's," speculated A.J. "Could be the name of an organization or club he belongs to."

They all agreed that they should investigate more on this. A.J. placed it in the other pocket on his jacket.

Two ring tabs, one more marble and a piece of broken glass later they concluded that one man's junk was, indeed, a larcenous bird's treasure—with an exception of the cufflink, perhaps.

With that business out of the way, they moved on to the next item on their to-do list: checking the rental records at the car rental office in town.

"Okay, here's what I wanna do…"

Rick laid out his plan on their way to the rental office.

_**S&S S&S**_

The nearest town, locally known as the Pit, consisted of six, seven blocks of stores and service offices. The general store and the small country-style post office looked like throwbacks from the fifties.

"You sure you're up for this?" Rick asked Pearl as they got out of the pickup.

"Yes, I'm sure. I do some acting onstage, you know."

She led the Simon brothers to Tate's Car Rental office and opened the door with a cheerful "Hi, Bruce!"

The bored-looking, middle-aged clerk at the counter looked up from the magazine he had been perusing.

"Oh, hey, P.J.! I didn't know you're back in town." Bruce seemed genuinely pleased to see her. Seeing a couple of unfamiliar faces, he asked, "Did you bring your friends from San Francisco?"

"No. This is my cousin, Rick." She answered as rehearsed but then ad-libbed and put her arm around his waist to show her affection, and he couldn't do anything about it but smile like he was really enjoying her attention.

"And this is my other cousin, Andreas, from Austria." She gestured towards A.J.

"No kidding! From Austria to the Pit—imagine that." Bruce shook his head in disbelief. "Which part of Austria?"

"Vienna," said Rick.

"_Nein. Aus Salzburg_." A.J. contradicted him just to give him a hard time.

Bruce grinned. "Wherever you're from, welcome to our town though it may be nothing to write home about. At any rate, are you looking for a set of wheels by any chance? May I be of your service?"

"I sure hope so, Bruce," said Rick smiling. "I'm wondering if you have a certain type of truck with decent horse powers and cargo space for camping and hunting equipment."

"Oh, yes, sir. We sure do!" The clerk replied with ardor and a big smile. "Do you have any preferences?"

"In a way, but can I take a look at what you got in the lot?"

"Certainly." Bruce stood up from his chair and signaled his prospective customers to follow him.

Pointing at one of the guest chairs, Rick turned to his brother and enunciated carefully, "_Warte hier_."

A.J. cocked his head pretending not to comprehend the words Rick had uttered with an atrocious American accent then he looked at the chair he was indicating and nodded.

"_Ja,_ _Ich werde hier warten bis ihr zurückkommt_."

Bruce looked puzzled when A.J. seated himself in the chair, his hands neatly placed on his knees. "He's not coming with us?"

Rick shrugged. "He just flew in this morning and is real tired." He figured the clerk was a little nervous to leave a stranger alone in the office. "Don't worry about him; he's a good kid and housebroken."

That drew a chuckle from Bruce.

"He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer if you know what I mean. But if you keep telling him what to do, he eventually gets it." Rick improvised.

When their eyes met briefly, A.J. was wearing a vague smile that people often would when they did not quite understand what was being said, but Rick knew what he was thinking behind that placid façade—_I'll get you for this later_.

Bruce took one more peek at A.J., who was sitting still like a trained dog obeying the master's commands and felt sorry for him_. How sad that such a polite boy is not right in the head._

He opened the door and said to Rick and Pearl, "All right, this way please."

Rick told his brother once again, "_Warte hier_, okay?"

"_Ja, Ich kann dich verstehen_."

After the door closed and he was alone in the office, A.J. muttered, "_Dummkopf_."

He waited several seconds watching the threesome walking towards the parking lot. Only when he was sure they would not return to the office anytime soon, did he spring into action.

He went behind the counter and opened a file cabinet drawer labeled 'current.' The drawer contained more paperwork than he had anticipated, but still it was not much. Most of the alphabetized hanging files were empty. He counted eleven active contracts and went over them alphabetically.

He first checked all the makes and models on the documents. There were only three sedan rentals, and none of them was a Chrysler. He and Rick had known this was a long shot, he reminded himself not to be discouraged. Just to be thorough, he perused the renters' information: names, hometowns, individual or business rental…

Suddenly, he stopped reading the contract in hand and went back to the previous one. It was a rental agreement for a Cadillac sedan, not a Chrysler, signed by Amanda Snodgrass. Wrong make, wrong gender by all means, but the rental was on a corporate account: Arnold Lindahl Industries.

_ALI?_

His heart fluttered with excitement though he did not allow himself to be too optimistic.

While he was writing down the new piece of information, he heard his brother sneeze somewhere outside the office—the signal that he and the others were coming back. He quickly returned the contract in the file, closed the drawer as fast and noiselessly as possible and scurried back to his chair.

Just as soon as he sat down, Bruce opened the door to let Rick and Pearl in.

"Sorry it didn't work out." Rick said to Bruce. "But, as I said, our cousin's heart is set on a Datsun pickup. I know it's a tall order, but he gets upset when he's not in his familiar environment."

"How do you manage to drive him around town without upsetting him?"

"Oh, just scooting around is no problem, but he wants a particular make to go on a hunting and fishing trip. Don't ask me why."

Bruce saw A.J. still sitting in the same position, staring blankly into space. Once again, he experienced a pang of sympathy for the poor fellow.

His nervous heart pounding, A.J. could hear it in his ears so loud he was afraid Bruce might hear it.

Rick tapped his brother on the shoulder and said shaking his head, "Sorry, no Datsun."

A.J. slowly raised his gaze and tilted his head as if to decipher what Rick had said.

"_Ach so_," replied he getting out of the chair.

"Thanks again, Bruce." Rick extended his right hand.

"My pleasure." The clerk took his hand for a firm handshake. "Come back here anytime if you change your mind." He then turned to Pearl. "All right, young lady. Don't be a stranger. Ya hear?" He gave her an affectionate hug.

He paused for a second looking for the phrase he'd had on the tip of his tongue.

"_Auf wiedersehen_," said he to the last member of the trio.

A.J.'s dull face slowly dissolved into a sunny smile. "_Ich wusste nicht dass Sie Deutsch sprechen!_"

"Uh…" Bruce glanced at Rick to send an SOS when unfamiliar words tumbled out of the foreign visitor's mouth.

"Andy." Rick placed his hand on his brother's shoulder shaking his head. "We gotta go. Say 'bye-bye' to this nice man."

A.J. bit the bullet and copied his brother's gesture, waving goodbye, "Bye-bye."

As soon as the threesome left the rental office, Pearl briskly walked back to Rick's pickup and doubled over laughing.

"You've done this before, I take it," said she between giggles. "I could barely keep a straight face. Is it one of your standup routines?"

"Hardly." A.J. glared at his smirking brother. "Rick usually gets the cognitively deficient role—it just comes naturally to him."

"Aw, don't sell yourself too short, A.J. You cut a fine, neurotic figure." Rick grinned smugly. "Anyway, did you find anything at all?"

"Well, I'm not sure if this will lead to anything, but one of the renters is an employee of Arnold Lindahl Industries."

"ALI…" Rick muttered to himself.

"What does that mean?" Pearl wondered aloud.

"That's for me to find out," grinned A.J. "Or rather, that's for Janet to find out. Excuse me while I make a call."

Watching A.J. trot to the nearest pay phone, Pearl casually asked Rick, "Who's Janet?"

"Janet Fowler. She's an assistant D.A. in San Diego County." Just to clarify their relationship, Rick elaborated offering an unsolicited piece of information, "She's just a friend of ours. My brother's not seeing anyone right now."

"I know. He told me," said she with a smile as though she could see through him. "He also said you're unattached as well."

_That blabbermouth!_ He wished A.J. were standing right next to him so he'd be able to bop him on the head.

The blabbermouth returned in a few minutes.

"She told me to check back in a couple of hours." He held up a piece of paper. "While I was on the phone, I looked up Roy Porter in the phonebook, and he's listed with the address and all."

Pearl looked at him and Rick quizzically. "You want to check out his place?"

Rick nodded. "Sure. We don't know how he and the killer are connected at the moment. It could be a random homicide, but my gut tells me otherwise."

"The perpetrator is obviously from out of town and, the way you describe him makes me believe he's not a typical criminal," said A.J. "And that leads us back to the question; what drove a seemingly average citizen to the edge?"

"Too bad you didn't tell me that beforehand. I could have saved you some time—I know where Roy lives." After a beat, she corrected herself. "Lived—where he lived. God, I still can't believe he's gone. He and my brothers were on the same football team in high school. I used to watch their games on Friday nights."

A.J. offered words of comfort as they climbed into Rick's Power Wagon.

"My brothers will be so upset when they learn Roy's passing." She said glumly.


	6. Chapter 6

The late Roy Porter's home was situated somewhere between the Lake and the Pit. The nearest neighbor's homestead was almost a mile to the south. It was apparent that the home was old, most likely handed down for generations.

Rick parked his pickup behind the garage that had been converted from a barn.

"This way, people won't see this truck from the road," he explained to Pearl. "Just a precaution is all though."

"So, Roy lived alone, huh?" asked A.J. one more time to make sure. "And no live-in girlfriend, right?"

She nodded. "That's right as far as I know. His parents were killed in a car accident a few years after he was drafted."

Rick led his brother and their charge and walked to the back of the house. When he caught something from the corner of his eye, he abruptly stopped and looked in through one of the windows.

"A.J.?"

"Yeah?"

"Come take a look at this."

A.J. and Pearl rushed to the window to see what Rick had found. The drapes were drawn, but through the gap between them, they could see the chaos inside.

"Oh, no! Someone trashed his place!" Pearl gasped.

Rick shook his head. "No, not trashed. I bet someone went through Roy's personal belongings looking for something."

"How can you tell? And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It's just an educated guess," said A.J. "And if our assumption is correct, it reinforces our hypothesis that Roy's murder was not a random killing."

Rick nodded in agreement, "The perp didn't flee after killing Roy like most criminals would—it's their instinct to skedaddle to avoid any charges for even a minor offense like a car accident, let alone murder. He had to stay behind to look for something that might incriminate him."

"You mean, the cufflink?" Pearl sounded unsure.

"No, much more than that. Besides, he knows he lost it at the lake," A.J. explained. "Whatever he's trying to find must be a more definitive piece of evidence that links him to Roy and his murder. He obviously came here after he'd had the final encounter with the deputy, regardless of the risk of being spotted or caught."

Pearl saw the older Simon jiggling the doorknob of the backdoor and asked uneasily, "You're not trying to break in, are you, Rick?"

"As a matter of fact, I am." He grinned.

"But why? He probably found what he was looking for and is long gone."

"No, I don't think so," said he shaking his head. "I'm pretty sure Roy got killed on the day you first saw the stranger at the lake. If he had found what he wanted, he wouldn't have stayed in this area for long. You said he'd been harassing you for a few days, didn't you?"

Rick unlocked the backdoor and stepped into the kitchen but, seeing Pearl follow him, turned around and whispered, "Hey, why don't you wait in my truck with A.J. while I look around? I don't want you to get in trouble by committing breaking and entering just in case the sheriff or someone else stops by."

A.J. knew his brother was trying to avoid telling her the risk of entering the premises. If the man they were after had not found the item he wanted, there was a good chance he would return here to search for it. He tugged on Pearl's sleeve and nodded reassuringly.

Once Pearl and A.J started heading back to the truck, Rick closed the door and took a quick look around. He zipped open his jacket to draw his Magnum as he walked into the kitchen.

It was a mess like the rest of the house, but he detected something more than disarray. It took him a while to put a finger on it: rage. He found a few dishes and cups smashed in pieces at the foot of the stove where they had no business being there. The intruder must have thrown them against the wall or the stove out of anger or frustration.

_Why was he so angry? What was the bone of contention? Roy Porter was only a deputy sheriff in the boondocks, wasn't he?_

Taking another cautious step forward, Rick gripped his gun firmly to have it at the ready.

A.J. and Pearl were back at the pickup. He placed his hand on the door handle on the passenger side to let her in, but when he was about to open the door, he heard some faint sound coming from the inside of the oversized garage that lasted only for a few seconds.

Pearl looked on nervously as he froze in mid-motion listening to something intently.

"Pearl." He whispered finally. "Go back to the house and tell Rick to come to the garage."

"Do you think someone's there?" Pearl whispered back. She seemed unnerved.

"I don't know yet. But be careful. Run to the house as fast as you can. Don't surprise him though; knock on the door and announce yourself before you enter."

She nodded and took off immediately.

Seeing her sprinting away, he moved quickly yet quietly to the front of the garage. There were two sets of double doors; one was bolted with a large bar, the other was not. He opened the unbolted door just a crack to see inside, but it was too dark to have a clear view.

_Should I wait for Rick to go in?_

He wavered for a moment. Then he heard the noise again, and it made up his mind for him. He opened the door several inches more to slip inside with his compact semi-automatic pistol in his hand.

"Rick! It's me, Pearl!"

The banging on the door and Pearl's yelling startled Rick. He stopped her as she barged into the kitchen.

"Hey, I told you to…"

"A.J. wants you to come to the garage! He thinks there may be someone there! Please hurry!"

Irritation and frustration he had initially felt quickly gave way to a burst of adrenaline that put him on high alert. Without another word, he grasped her hand and ran out of the house.

The second he stepped outside, Rick saw a tall man running away from the garage. As he raised his arm to take aim at him, the stranger with a ski mask on turned around raising his arm. Something metallic flashed in his hand.

"Get down!"

Screaming at the top of his lungs, Rick pushed Pearl down without waiting for her to obey his command as he dropped to the ground.

He braced himself for gunfire, but when it did not come, he lifted his head and hazarded a look.

The masked man was trying to pull the trigger of his gun, but nothing happened. After a couple of futile attempts, he hurled it angrily and resumed running.

Rick sprang back on his feet and said to Pearl, "Stay down. Don't move unless it's absolutely necessary." Then he was off on foot chase.

As he took several steps, he saw the man go over the knoll beyond the garage and disappear from his sight. Several seconds later, he heard the sound of a car engine and screeching tires.

"Aaaargh!"

Realizing that the mystery man was getting away, Rick yelled in exasperation. He put his .44 back in the shoulder holster and reluctantly turned around to fetch Pearl and find A.J. but froze in his tracks when his eyes fell on the object lying in the grass.

It was the handgun the intruder had ditched, but it was much more than that—before picking it up, he knew it was his brother's semi-automatic. His heart instantly started racing, his mouth went dry.

"A.J…." He whispered hoarsely holding the gun tightly in his hand.

_Where the hell has he been all this time?_

"A.J.!" He broke into a run.

Before he made it to the garage, A.J. appeared from behind the structure. He was shuffling along and looked unsteady on his feet.

Pearl also came running to rejoin the brothers.

Rick grabbed his brother's arm and asked sharply, "What the hell happened?"

"I got jumped," replied A.J. sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.  
"Why didn't you wait for me?" Rick barked at him as his anxiety began to subside.

"I had a momentary lapse of judgment, all right?" A.J. looked chagrined and embarrassed. "He tricked me. He must have thrown something at the far corner of the garage, and I fell for it. When I went inside, he was lying in wait by the door. I didn't even see him before I got knocked out."

"How could you make such a rookie mistake?"

Rick's emotions were still running high after the brief but intense incident, and he took it out on A.J., but that was when Pearl intervened.

"That's enough, Rick! You don't have to bite his head off." She took a stand gathering the younger Simon into her arms as if to protect him from physical assault. "Can't you see he's hurt?"

A.J. seemed dwarfed at her ample bosom and more embarrassed than before.

"Don't let him fool you," growled Rick. "He's a lot tougher than he looks."

"He's right, Pearl," said A.J. wiggling out of her embrace. "We've had it worse before, a lot worse. Besides, it's just a lump on the head, nothing's broken."

"That's because the guy that jumped you is an amateur. You really lucked out this time."

"What?" A.J. looked at his brother uncomprehendingly.

Rick tossed the Smith & Wesson semi-auto to him. "He tried to shoot at us but couldn't 'cause he had no idea that your gun's safety is still on."

Seeing his brother hastily checking on his firearm, he continued. "If he's a career criminal—though I seriously doubt it—he must be relatively new at it, or a real dumb one who doesn't know how to handle a gun," He deliberately paused to make eye contact with A.J. and took another dig at him, "But he's still capable of outsmarting you."

A.J. groaned but saw the point Rick was trying to make. "Or, he may have been a non-violent criminal till now."

"Roy might have had a different opinion about that," said Pearl.

"That's precisely the point, can't you see? Roy's murder. As you may recall, he was killed with a large rock. It's an odd choice of weapons if the murder was premeditated, wouldn't you say? And most criminals carry some sort of weapon for protection all the time, whether they are contemplating a criminal activity or not," explained A.J.

"Yeah, and there's the botched kidnapping attempt," said Rick nodding his head. "Kidnappers are usually armed if they're planning to grab an adult victim to make it easier, but your guy obviously wasn't, and when your father scared him away with that shotgun of his, he didn't try to fight him off, right?"

"I don't know what that means." Pearl seemed nonplussed. "And it doesn't make any difference to me if he's unarmed or inexperienced. He still scares me to death, and I don't want to stay here anymore."

She took A.J.'s hand and said, "Come on. Let's go."

"But…"

She did not let him finish his sentence and said, "Don't argue with me, A.J. I'm your client, and I'd say we go back to the lodge. Now!"

_Oh, great_, Rick wanted to roll his eyes as she dragged his brother to the truck, like a mother plucking her unwilling child out of a playroom to hurry home.

_Having to let a female client tag along while working on a case is bad enough, but why does she have to be such a bossy one?_

Climbing into the pickup and turning on the engine, he bemoaned the misfortune with a sigh.


	7. Chapter 7

Upon returning to Juniper Lodge, Pearl insisted on checking and treating the bump on A.J.'s head. While she was patching him up in the bathroom, Rick put in a call to Janet to get the background information on Arnold Lindahl Industries.

Toward the end of the phone conversation, A.J. came out of the bathroom looking like Marlowe right after a visit to the vet.

"Oh, there he is," Rick informed Janet, grinning. "Nah, he's all right. His nose is out of joint 'cause our client's kinda pushy and treats him like her kid brother."

A.J. threw him a venomous glare, and, while cleaning up the bathroom counter, Pearl shouted, "I heard that!"

"Uh-oh. I'm in trouble."

Rick listened to Janet on the other end of the phone for a few seconds and started laughing.

_She probably told him his being in trouble is nothing new, or something to that effect_, A.J. expertly surmised, but he did not feel like laughing. He was still humiliated and beating himself up for making, at least in his mind, an inexcusable mistake. Had he waited for Rick to go into the garage at Roy's home, they could have wrapped up this case.

As Rick was hanging up the phone, Pearl emerged from the bathroom and asked, "So, what did Janet tell you?"

"Why don't you have a seat? I'll tell you all about it."

She sat down on the bed A.J. was sitting on. "Did you find anything promising?"

"Be patient, will you? Why don't you wait and hear what I'm going to say?"

"Yes, of course. Sorry, Rick."

Satisfied that she was properly chastised, Rick started recapping the information he had received from Janet.

"Arnold Lindahl Industries may not be a household name, but it's a conglomerate that owns a bunch of businesses here in this country and around the world: steel mills here, medical research labs there, automobile factories elsewhere, dairy farms, orchards, commercial properties, and a whole lot more. One of them happens to be Juniper Lodge."

"Really?" said Pearl, her eyes wide. "What a coincidence!"

"Or, it may not be a coincidence at all." A.J. opined. "But, of course, it's too early to call the shots."

Rick nodded to agree with his brother. "Most of us are not familiar with ALI 'cause all it does is acquire all or majority of other companies' shares but let them operate under their old brand names after the takeovers. And Amanda Snodgrass is one of the ALI internal auditors who travel from company to company that ALI controls to conduct a surprise audit to make sure they're on the up-and-up."

"So, she's here to audit the lodge's books," said A.J. reflectively. "And she's probably staying here since this is a remote area, and traveling from another place of accommodation is rather time consuming. Besides, she rented a car from Tate's Car Rental."

"But why?" asked Pearl. "She could have rented a car from one of the rental companies at or near the airport."

"That's a very good question." Rick was somewhat impressed with her insight. "At this point, all we can do is speculate, but it could be a number of things. Maybe she was too tired to drive long distance. The closest airport from here is, what, eighty, ninety miles away, right? Maybe she took a cab all the way to the lodge to keep her arrival secret then rented a car locally after she got here. It takes her more than a day or two to go over the books and crunch numbers. She probably needs some sort of transportation to get around while staying here."

"Or, maybe she knows someone in the area and got a ride to the lodge or Tate's Rental though it's highly unlikely in this case," said A.J.

"Why is that?"

"To keep the element of surprise intact. This is a small community, and besides which, people tend to gossip regardless of the size of the town they live in." He explained to Pearl. "I have a hunch that she took every precaution to keep her arrival under the radar making no reservations for her accommodations and car rental and such."

"Do you think she's somehow involved in what happened in the last few days?"

"Hard to say," said Rick. "Maybe we should make an arrangement to meet this Snodgrass woman somehow."

"What?" Pearl gasped. "Isn't it risky? What if she's an accomplice to Roy's murder?"

"Maybe so, but sometimes we have to take chances to get a breakthrough." Rick shrugged. "If she's clean, she may be able to give us more information on ALI and the cufflink we got. If not, our little chat hopefully will shake her tree."

Pearl turned to A.J. as if to ask for his opinion on this matter. He nodded to let her know that he seconded Rick's decision.

Pearl still looked uncertain about the brothers' plan. "How do you find and get her to talk then?"

"I'm pretty sure she's here to go over the ledgers," said A.J. "In addition, I saw a Cadillac sedan that matches the rental record in the parking lot when we came in."

"It's easy to find out," said Rick, picking up the phone receiver again.

He punched 0 for the switchboard. When the operator came on, he asked, "Hi. Can you transfer this call to one of the hotel guests, Amanda Snodgrass?" He paused to listen. "No, I don't know her room number."

He was silent for several seconds before hanging up the phone.

"Well, she's here all right, but she's not in her room right now unless she's taking a shower or something and can't answer the phone."

"It's quite possible that she's still working in the lodge's office since it's not yet four o'clock." A.J. conjectured.

Nodding his head, Rick rose to his feet. "There's only one way to find out, is there?"

_**S&S S&S**_

The Simon brothers and Pearl went downstairs to the lobby to look for the ALI auditor. The man behind the front desk was writing something in a notebook but looked up as they approached the counter.

"Good afternoon. May I help you?"

"Well, I hope so," Rick smiled a friendly smile. "Here's the thing—I think I saw my acquaintance the other day. If I'm right, she's probably working in your office right now. Her name is Amanda. Amanda Snodgrass from Arnold Lindahl."

"Yes?" The clerk said noncommittally, not knowing where this conversation was going.

Encouraged by the fact that the clerk had not asked who Amanda Snodgrass was, Rick continued, "If she's working in the office back there, would you please ask her if I could speak to her for a few minutes?"

The clerk understandably hesitated, but after a while he asked, "May I have your name, sir?"

"Rick Simon." The older Simon answered calmly though he felt like jumping with joy.

"Very well, sir. I'll be back shortly."

The clerk left his post and disappeared into the backroom.

A few minutes later, he returned with a woman in her late forties or early fifties with a straight-from-the-bottle henna-red bob.

"Which one of you is Rick Simon?"

She was curt and did not sound too happy to be interrupted in the middle of an intense bean-counting session. Although she was reed-thin and looked frail, her demeanor said loud and clear, _don't mess with me._

"I am." Rick offered her a pacifying smile with his hat in his hand, literally.

She studied his face with fierce intensity. "Do I know you?"

"You probably don't remember me," said he in his aw-shucks tone. "We met briefly at a company function some years ago when my ex-girlfriend was still working for ALI."

He was banking on that she had attended some of the past company functions, and that, if she had, her recollection of them was a bit fuzzy.

He noticed Amanda was stealing glances at A.J. and Pearl. "Oh, I'm sorry. This is my brother, A.J. We're from San Diego, visiting our cousin, Pearl here, and her family."

Amanda only nodded to acknowledge the blond and the amazon's greetings.

"The reason I wanted to see you is that we found something that might belong to an ALI employee when we went to the lake this morning."

He signaled A.J. to hand over the cufflink. He showed it to Amanda.

"I believe it's sterling silver and quite expensive, and I figure the man who lost it must be trying hard to find it. When I saw the ALI engraving, I remembered seeing you and thought you might be traveling with someone else from the company, or know another ALI employee in the area."

The auditor was holding the cufflink and scrutinizing it with a frown on her face. Raising her head, she said, "I'm traveling alone, and I don't know any colleague based in this region."

She handed the cufflink back to Rick. "But there may be a way to narrow down the employees who could have lost it."

"Really?" Rick was genuinely happy to hear that. "How?"

"Each year, our company rewards its top employees in all divisions and fields with ten years or more of excellent service. Pencil pushers get trinkets, managers and professionals get more expensive accessories, and CEOs receive hefty bonuses."

"By professionals, do you mean…?"

"Engineers, medical doctors, lawyers, scientists, CPAs and the whole gamut."

"But there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of the people who have received this kind of stuff all over the world."

Amanda shook her head. "No, this is the U.S. tradition; they don't do it abroad. And the ALI Purchasing Department has a team for selecting gift items. They never repeat the same things. Sure, they handed out cufflinks and watches more than once, but they are never the same make or design."

She raised her arm to show off her lady's watch. "I got this Cartier along with commendations on my twentieth anniversary. I know someone else who received a Tiffany watch some years later."

"So, you're saying that we can pinpoint the year this cufflink was given to a handful of managers and professionals? And you think the Purchasing has the record of the past gifts?"

"I believe so," she nodded and took out a business card case from her purse. "Here's my card. The second phone number is for the main office. Call them and ask for the Purchasing Department."

Rick thanked her profusely and let her go back to her mind-numbing task.

Walking away from the front desk, Pearl whispered to him, "_That_ was amazing!" She seemed both impressed and amused.

"Perhaps my brother has chosen a wrong career—he would have made more money working as a con man." A.J. added a snarky comment.

"So, are you going to call ALI's home office?" asked Pearl.

Rick checked on the contact information on the business card and said, "Yeah, why not? It's located in California, so it's still within their business hours."

As soon as they returned to their room, A.J. took the card from Rick and got on the phone. When he was transferred to the Purchasing, he succinctly summarized the reason for the call.

Seeing that things were going smoothly, Pearl announced to Rick, "I'm going downstairs to call my family to let them know how we're doing."

"And let them know about Roy?"

She let out a heavy sigh. "Yes, that too. Anyway, I'll be back in a few minutes."

With her gone and A.J. on the phone, Rick had nothing to do at the moment. He lay down on one of the beds with his hands clasped behind his head.

Lack of sleep sneaked up on him once he was on the soft bed, and he started to nod off listening to his brother's monotonous voice.

Suddenly, he was rudely awakened.

"Ack!"

When he sat up on the bed with a start, he found Pearl and A.J. sitting on each side giggling like a couple of kids trying to wake up their father on Saturday morning, and he knew they had sat down hard and bounced on the bed on purpose to rouse him from his nap.

"What's so funny?" he grumbled. "Haven't you seen a man taking a nap before?"

"Not a man making a confession in his sleep, I haven't." A.J. happily replied.

"Confessing to what?"

"Oh, you'd like to know, wouldn't you?"

Rick narrowed his eyes. "You're pulling my leg."

"I'm not!"

Rick turned to Pearl. "He's pulling my leg, isn't he?"

"I know better than to come between two quarreling brothers," said she demurely although this little prank was her idea.

"Fine!" Rick declared trying to put the monkeyshines behind him. "So, what'd you find?"

"In a nutshell, only thirty-five male employees received this particular cufflink just last year. Seventeen top female workers in their fields received diamond earrings."

"Only thirty-five?" Pearl did not sound too optimistic. "That's still quite a few."

"Out of thirty-five, one passed away several months ago, eight were transferred to overseas posts, so the actual figure is twenty-six."

"That's still twenty-five too many," said Rick taking a peek at the piece of paper A.J. was holding. "You got their names and job titles?"

"Just for starters," said A.J. with a nod. "Amanda said she doesn't know any ALI employee working in the region. If that's true, the man who killed Roy Porter could be staying at one of the resorts nearby."

"Do you think he's staying here?" asked Pearl anxiously.

"Doubtful. It's too close for comfort for the perp to be here, but we'll check it out just to be on the safe side," said Rick.

"How?"

"We can call the front desk and pretend we're calling another hotel guest," explained A.J. "But, obviously, we can't repeat it twenty-six times. I don't think the front desk clerk is that obtuse."

"But not to worry—we'll find the way to get the information, one way or another." Rick said with a poker face.

A.J. chuckled as though his brother had said something amusing. Rick followed suit.

"Oh, I'm sure you will," said Pearl, grinning like she was on to their mischief. "But before you do any of that, I'd like to invite you to dinner at my father's place."

The Simons stopped chuckling.

"I've already placed an order to go, so we should be able to pick it up at the restaurant here in half an hour."

"I don't want to sound too ungrateful, but isn't it easier for your folks to come over here to dine with us?" Rick asked the question that was also on A.J.'s mind.

"Yes, but they have a lot of upkeep to do in and around the house after a long absence. And they don't like eating in public places." Pearl sounded a bit defensive. "I know you and my family got off on the wrong foot, buy you'll see they're good people in their own unique way once you get to know them."

Rick wasn't sure if he particularly wanted to get acquainted with them. Not now, not ever.

"Oh, I'm sure they are."

Rick could not believe what A.J. was saying.

"We gladly accept your invitation. Thank you."

His own brother was defecting from him. _I'm really fed up with this 'we' business._ Dreading the upcoming get-together with the trigger-happy old man and his eight-hundred-pound gorillas, Rick wished for the umpteenth time he had never planned this trip in the first place.


	8. Chapter 8

"Take the next left, and you'll see it."

Following Pearl's direction, Rick veered left. What he and his brother saw was not quite what they had had in their minds.

They had imagined Pop and his clan lived in a rundown farmhouse, similar to the cabin they had been at but only larger.

The building at the end of the driveway was at least four or five times larger than A.J.'s home and appeared fairly new. It was also very modern. The brothers stared at it in stunned silence.

"Holy mackerel!" Rick exclaimed after a beat or two. "What does your old man do for a living?"

"Investment." She seemed a little uncomfortable discussing her father's finances. "It's not that we were rich growing up. After he received the life insurance payment upon my mother's death, he invested a portion of it. Before long, he quit his carpentry and cabinet making business and became a full-time investor. He seems to have an uncanny ability to pick winners when it comes to the stock market."

"Go figure," whispered Rick incredulously. "You said your family was away for some time. Does your father have vacation homes elsewhere?"

"He has a couple of rental properties in Corpus Christi where he grew up, a timeshare in Miami and a condominium in Palm Beach. He often goes to Florida to vacation and look for real estate investment properties."

As Rick braked to park his truck in front of the five-car garage, Pop appeared from the back of the house.

"P.J.!" He impatiently called to his daughter. "What took you so long?"

"You ordered so much food it took the restaurant staff a lot longer than usual to prepare it."

Pop nodded absentmindedly eyeing the mountain of bags and food containers.

"Thank you for inviting us, Mr. Bisser," said A.J. as he got out of the pickup. "You have a splendid home."

"Yeah, but maintenance's killin' me and my boys." Pop grumbled. "While we were down in Florida, someone snuck inside and broke some furniture. Then the man that's after my girl ransacked the place. And a part of the back fence is knocked down, so we're tryin' to fix it now. This used to be a real good neighborhood but not anymore. No wonder a coupla my neighbors sold their places an' moved out."

"It shouldn't take more than half an hour to warm up the food, so come inside in ten, fifteen minutes to clean up and set the table," said Pearl unloading the truck.

The three men helped her carry the food inside. She shooed them out of the kitchen once they were done unloading and the food was in the oven.

Walking back to the foyer, Rick looked around and said, "This is a real nice place you got here."

The praise, though absurdly understated, seemed to have tickled Pop immensely. "If you wanna pass the time till supper, you can shoot pool in the parlor back there." He pointed toward the hallway. "Just make yourselves at home, boys."

When Pop went outside to resume the repair, Rick spun around and headed down the hallway, curious to know what the rec room looked like.

The room Pop called parlor was enormous, but it was not the size of the room that impressed Rick. It had not only a pool table but also arcade game machines and a well-appointed wet bar among others. A low whistle escaped through his lips.

A.J. remained in the foyer, admiring a number of _objets d'art_ big and small that adorned the tables and the shelves. As he was studying one of the minuscule yet intricate _netsuke_ in the corner curio cabinet, Rick passed by him and started climbing up the stairs.

"Hey, Rick?" said he, his eyes still on the miniature carving. "A house this size must have a bathroom downstairs."

"I don't have to go to the bathroom."

A.J. was so deeply absorbed in the beauty of the artwork the implication of his brother's remark did not sink in right away. Suddenly he blinked a couple of times as if to come out of a dream.

"Rick?"

He whipped around and found the staircase empty.

"Where are you, Rick?" He called his brother's name again bounding up the stairs.

He reached the top of the stairs just in time to see Rick disappear into the room at the end of the hallway. He ran all the way to the entrance of the room and stuck his head in.

"Rick! Don't…"

His brother was nowhere in sight. The room seemed to be the antechamber of the master bedroom.

"Rick! Come back here right now, for God's sake!"

Though his tone was harsh, he did not raise his voice not wanting to alarm Pearl downstairs.

A few moments later, Rick emerged from the master bedroom.

"Hey, A.J.! You gotta see the jetted tub in the bathroom back there! And the shower stall has several showerheads in different places and directions—it's so big there's no need for shower curtains or doors!"

"Are you nuts? What do you think you're doing?"

Rick brushed past A.J. to get out of the room, eager to explore the house more.

A.J. tugged his older brother's sleeve. "Rick, you shouldn't be doing this." He sounded a little nervous. "You don't want to be on the wrong side of Mr. Bisser and his shotgun."

"You worry like an old lady, A.J. Pop told us to make ourselves at home. There's no harm in taking a look around." Rick shrugged and brushed him off.

When he opened the next door down, he unexpectedly got an eyeful of Pearl.

She was naked from the waist up.

They froze in total disbelief for a brief moment. Then came an ear-piercing scream from her classically trained pair of lungs. She slammed the door shut while he was standing at the doorway, petrified in shock—but not for long.

The doorknob squarely hit his nether region. The worst kind of pain for men exploded in his crotch.

Moaning, Rick collapsed on the floor in slow motion. It was too painful for him to be able to scream. As he writhed in agony on the floor, a pair of shoes came into view.

"You were saying?"

Reacting to his brother's gleeful voice, he slowly looked up. A.J. was smiling down at him and did not sound very sympathetic, not even a bit.

"Oh, shut up." Rick managed—just barely—to utter three little words between gasps. The debilitating pain in the groin was now shooting up to the abdomen.

Seeing Rick's hands stuck between the legs, A.J. realized where he was hurting and cringed with a phantom pain. His knees slammed together involuntarily.

"Ooh, that's gotta hurt," said he grimacing. "Can I get you an ice pack? Do you want anything?"

"Put me out of misery, why don't you?" whimpered Rick.

"P.J.! What's goin' on?"

Rick and A.J. looked at each other in panic when they heard Pop's voice downstairs. What had happened last night and his shotgun were still fresh in their memory.

The bedroom door jerked open, and Pearl's head popped out. "Nothing, Dad! I just saw a huge spider in my room!"

To their dismay, they all heard Pop's heavy footsteps; he was coming upstairs.

Dressed in a bathrobe, Pearl cursed in rather unladylike fashion and quickly dragged Rick, who was still lying on the floor, into her room by grasping the collar of his jacket.

The moment she put him in the bathroom and closed the door, Pop showed up at her bedroom door with his trusted shotgun in hand.

"You sure you're alright, girl? Spiders never scared you before."

"Well, like I said, it was huge, just as big as a tarantula!"

A.J. wanted to tell her there were no large arachnids native to the region at this altitude, but, considering the current circumstance, he wisely kept that tidbit of information to himself.

"Where'd it go?" asked Pop, still suspicious.

"Rick threw it out the window."

He looked around and saw only his daughter and A.J. "Where's he?"

"In the bathroom," she answered truthfully.

Before he could resume the interrogation, she assured him, "You worry too much, Dad. I'm safe with Rick and A.J."

He glanced at one half of the shamus brothers. The boy didn't look big and strong enough to beat his daughter in arm wrestling. And the look on his face wasn't too assuring either—he looked like a little rascal who had been caught with a broken Ming Dynasty vase. When Pop stared him down, he started blinking like a broken traffic light.

"Now, why don't you go tell Vance and Vaughn to come inside? Dinner will be ready in fifteen, twenty minutes, so wash up and set the table for me, okay?" Pearl said trying to send her father outside.

Although he was not quite convinced everything was kosher, Pop turned around and plodded downstairs mumbling something to no one in particular.

As they heard the front door open and close, Pearl and A.J. heaved a collective sigh of relief.

When their eyes met, they cried out simultaneously. "Rick!"

They opened the bathroom door and found him in an upright position—sort of. Though he was still in a lot of pain, he was taking baby steps to walk it off.

"Are you all right?" asked A.J.

"What do you think?" glowered Rick, chafed by his brother's stupid question.

"You should have knocked first, Rick." Pearl rebuked him.

"Hey, can it, will ya? Don't you think I suffered enough already?"

"Rick! Don't talk to her like that. She stuck her neck out to protect you from her father's itchy trigger finger in spite of whatever you've done. You should be thanking her instead."

When the Simon brothers began yet another argument, Pearl grabbed them both by the scruff of their necks and threw them out of her room.

"Hey!" Rick started to protest, but Pearl did not let him go on.

"I'm going to be busy with a lot of things to do till dinner, so be good. And don't get into any more trouble."

She slammed the door shut again in their faces.

"I don't believe this. She kicked us out of the room."

"I can't blame her. And she has every right to do so." A.J. gave his brother a little push on the back. "Come on. Let's go and wait downstairs."

_Where I can keep you on a short leash_, he mentally added.

By the time the Bisser men came in for dinner, the pain in Rick's groin had lessened to a dull throbbing ache, and he was able to help them set the table.

A.J. helped Pearl in the kitchen. She had changed into a dress that, he assumed, was tailor-made. It could not hide her statuesque build but flattered her nice features.

In the formal dining room, Pop and Pearl sat at each end of an enormous dinner table. Vance and Vaughn sat across from each other by their father. Rick and A.J. flanked her.

The younger Simon had been planning to thank the head of the household for the invitation once again at the commencement of the meal, but he and Rick were largely ignored at the table while Pop and his sons were busy piling up the food on their plates.

Pearl's twin brothers had no table manners; they were like a couple of wild animals ripping their kill apart. Even Rick, who didn't know or care which fork to use for what at snooty restaurants, was appalled. A.J. was rapidly losing his appetite. They now understood why the Bissers, especially Pearl, did not like to eat out.

Noticing Rick sneaking peeks at her siblings between bites and A.J. picking at the food on his plate, Pearl said, "Vance, Vaughn, will you stop stuffing your faces? You're grossing out our guests!"

One of the twins looked up from his plate. "They're not our guests; they're hired hands working for you," mumbled he with his mouth full.

The other twin snorted, "It's not our fault that they're so delicate. No wonder they're so runty."

Rick and A.J. were livid; they did not care for being called delicate, short, skinny—or runty for that matter.

"Shut up, Vaughn! Just because they're not as big as you, it doesn't mean they're runty, you big ox!" Pearl fiercely defended the Simons.

"They are too. They're smaller than you."

She turned red in the face. She had always hated to be reminded that she was big.

"Now, you kids hush up. I cain't enjoy this sumptuous meal when you're screamin' at each other." Pop spoke up for the first time. "We ordered lunch from Dotty's, an' it was plain horrible, I could hardly eat it."

"Ain't that the truth!" Vance agreed enthusiastically. "I think the sheriff feeds the stuff from Dotty's to the guys in jail as a form of punishment."

The twins laughed in perfect unison while shoveling food in their mouths.

A.J. stopped playing with his food all of a sudden staring at and beyond his plate. He put down his fork and lifted his gaze to look his brother in the eye.

"Rick." Though his voice was low, the tone suggested urgency. "We've got to go."

Rick furrowed his brow. "What? Where?"

"To the Pit, or more precisely, to the sheriff's office."

Rick cocked his head trying to figure out what his brother had meant. Then something clicked in his head. He nodded to let him know he was on board with the idea.

Overhearing their conversation, Pearl seemed devastated by this dinner fiasco. "Rick, A.J., please…"

A.J. shook his head. "No, it's not what you think, Pearl. We really have to go—to continue our investigation."

"Mr. Bisser," he addressed to Pop. "It's generous of you to have us over for dinner, and we'd like to stay and enjoy your hospitality, but something came up, and we must take our leave now. I hope you'll understand."

Pop only shrugged his shoulders. If he was offended, he did not show it. "Sure. When you gotta go, you gotta go, I s'ppose."

Rick was already on his feet tossing his napkin on the table.

Following suit, Pearl rose from her chair. "I'll pack some of the food to take…"

"No." He said cutting her off. "No time for that."

The Bisser twins were glad to see them take a hasty leave. There was more food to go around among only three men.

"They're definitely runty—and flaky too," declared Vance, making his brother laugh out loud.

As Rick shifted the gear into reverse, Pearl asked, "Could one of you please tell me what's all this about? Why do we have to be in such a hurry?"

"First of all, we're trying to locate the item the murderer's been trying to find for the last few days before he does," said A.J.

"You think it might be hidden somewhere in the sheriff's office?"

"It's a strong possibility," said Rick making a three-point turn. "That's a place no criminal wants to set foot in, and there's always someone manning the desk unlike a private home. When you think about it, it's an ideal place to hide something."

"Buy why do we have to go there now?"

"Well, there's a fifty-fifty chance that Roy was involved in an illegal activity," A.J. explained. "And if that's the case, it's also possible the sheriff may be mixed up in it."

Seeing Pearl's anxious face, he smiled assuredly. "As I said, it's just a possibility, but if he's involved, we need to find the evidence right away. He has access to the place at all hours; we don't."

She searched the brothers' faces as if to look for more assurance. "So, what are your plans? How do you conduct the search?"

Rick fingered his mustache and said casually, "Well, let's talk about that on our way."


	9. Chapter 9

It was a dark night with a sliver of the new moon in the sky when the Simons and Pearl returned to the Pit. Never a bustling town, it was now completely deserted.

Rick slowed down to park his pickup a couple of buildings away from the sheriff's office, making sure Upham's jeep was not parked anywhere.

"Whose truck is that? Do you know?" Rick asked indicating a rust bucket, which, in the distant past, had been a shiny Chevy pickup.

"Belinda's. She's the dispatcher and Jane of all trades on the swing shift." Pearl said.

"Good." He nodded. "You know what to do, right?"

"Yes, give us a few minutes."

After Pearl and A.J. knocked on the door and walked into the sheriff's office, Rick opened the toolbox on the flatbed and selected several tools he might need for this job.

Belinda Jorgenson was surprised to see the Bisser girl waltzing into her workplace.

"Hi, Belinda. How are you?"

"Oh, fine. Thanks, hon," said Belinda wondering why she sounded so friendly though they were only nodding acquaintances.

Pearl placed her hand on A.J.'s arm and said, "This is my cousin, A.J., from San Diego."

"Nice to meet you, ma'am."

Belinda exchanged pleasantries with the young man. He was a few inches shorter than Pearl and bore no resemblance to any of her family members. She assumedhe couldn't be on her mother's side of the family.

"So, what brought you here? Is the anything I can do for you?"

"I suppose you heard about Roy." Pearl's tone was now much more somber.

"Yes, but I just couldn't believe it at first."

"I don't know if the sheriff told you, but I saw a stranger at the Lake around the time of his death, and this man later tried to kidnap me."

"No!" Belinda expressed her total disbelief, her eyes wide, her hand over the mouth.

Nodding her head, Pearl said, "The reason I came here is that I may have a piece of evidence for the murder."

A.J. promptly produced the cufflink from his pocket and handed it to Belinda.

"I found it at the Lake when I first saw the man. I forgot all about it till this evening, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that he ransacked my father's place to get it back."

Belinda was now all ears, trying not to miss any juicy detail.

Rick waited exactly two minutes before he began to pick the lock on the backdoor of the sheriff's office. It took him no time to unlock it for it was a cheap one in poor quality.

He cautiously opened the door and heard a snippet of lively conversation drifting down from the reception.

_So far so good._

He quietly slipped into the back of the building. The jail cells were on his left, the locker room and the restroom on the right. Luckily, there was no one locked up in jail. Making sure that the coast was clear, he quickly entered the locker room.

He scanned the names on the lockers. Roy Porter's had a single-dial padlock. He was in luck; all he had to do was cut it. Holding a penlight in his mouth, he took out a small bolt cutter and covered the whole thing—lock, cutter—with his jacket to mask the sound of cutting metal.

Once the lock was removed, Rick opened the locker as quietly as possible then went through Roy's personal effects while keeping half an ear on the office front: uniforms, street clothes, shoes, guns, rifles, ammunition, books, manuals, an open bag of beef jerky…

He checked every pocket on each article of clothing, looked into shoes and socks, shook the printed material holding it upside down, but nothing turned up.

_Did I miss anything? _

On the front end of the office, A.J. surreptitiously checked on the wall clock again while the two women were deeply engaged in small town gossip. He gave Pearl a subtle signal by placing his hand on the small of her back.

"Uh-huh, that's for sure," she nodded in agreement as Belinda prattled on. "Oh, excuse me, Belinda—I almost forgot." She abruptly interrupted the dispatcher.

"What's that, hon?"

"I spilled some coffee on my dress a while ago. May I use the restroom to get the stains out?" Pearl partially opened her coat she was wearing as if to show the blemish that was not there.

"Sure thing. Go right ahead."

Watching Pearl walk away from her desk, Belinda said to A.J., "So, you're from San Diego, huh?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You miss the hubbub of a big city? I bet it gets kinda boring around here after a few days."

"Oh, no. Not at all." He replied politely but emphatically. "Your town is really tranquil and beautiful. Everywhere you go, all you have to do is just point and shoot, and you get a perfect photograph each time."

His smile was so warm and engaging she could not resist smiling back.

Pearl cleared her throat to let Rick know she was approaching the locker room. She took a peek inside and saw him putting some clothes back in Roy's locker.

Turning his gaze to the entrance, he shook his head and clearly mouthed the words, "Give me five more minutes." To be sure, he held up his open hand to indicate five.

Pearl nodded and went into the restroom. She turned on the faucet in the sink and let the water run while keeping an eye on her wristwatch.

By then, Rick had gone over every single item in the locker twice and still had not been able to find anything significant. Frustrated, he took a step back to access this matter from a different angle.

As he glanced at a pair of boots in the bottom left corner of the locker, his eyes caught something he had not noticed before: a tiny gap between the bottom panel and the frame.

_False bottom?_

He felt hope and excitement flooding back. He took out his pocketknife and inserted the blade in the crack to lift the bottom panel.

Just before she turned off the faucet, Pearl dabbed the front of her dress with a piece of damp paper towel for show. Stepping out of the restroom, she took another look at the locker room and found it empty. The locker Rick had been inspecting was now shut and padlocked. Nothing seemed out of place or disturbed.

Walking back to the reception desk, she could tell A.J. had done a great job drawing and keeping Belinda's undivided attention. The dispatcher sounded giggly and even flirty like a young woman though she was no longer a spring chicken.

"Hi! Sorry I have kept you waiting so long," said Pearl, announcing her return.

"Oh, no problem, honey." Belinda sounded somehow disappointed to see her.

"I'm sorry we barged in on you like this during your office hours. I'll let you go back to work now. We should be going anyway." Pearl smiled sweetly. "I'd appreciate it if you could give the cufflink to the sheriff and tell him where I found it."

"Will do." The dispatcher replied tersely.

"It was a pleasure meeting you, ma'am." A.J. bade her farewell with an extra charming smile.

"Nice meeting you too." Belinda's smiling face showed that she truly meant what she said. "Hope you'll enjoy the rest of your stay here, dear."

When they left the sheriff's office and returned to the Power Wagon, Pearl and A.J saw Rick coming back from another direction.

"Find anything?" eagerly asked A.J.

"Yeah," said Rick opening the door of his pickup. "Wait till you see it."

Once all three of them climbed back in the truck, Rick showed what he had in his pocket.

"A key?" Pearl had no idea what that meant. "For what? And it's kind of small, isn't it?"

"Maybe this'll help explain." This time Rick brought out a little booklet that looked like a bank passbook.

A.J. took it from his brother and had a look inside. It was indeed a passbook. "Roy deposited five hundred dollars in his new savings account about nine months ago, but there have been very little activities since then. There's also a handwritten memo, 'box 22' in the margin."

"I still don't understand…"

"Can't you see?" Rick said to Pearl. "Opening a savings account was just to get his foot in the door."

A.J. nodded his head. "So that he'd be able to rent a safe deposit box."

"You mean…" She could not bring herself to articulate what she suspected.

"Yeah, I bet my bottom dollar he was on the take or blackmailing someone," said Rick. "And I think he kept most of the dirty money in the deposit box at a bank in a different town not to raise any suspicion."

A.J. closed the passbook to see what was on the cover. "First National Bank."

"We don't have that bank here. The closest branch is…"

"A couple of towns away, I know." Rick said. "I looked that up in the yellow pages."

"What do you want to do next?" asked Pearl. Her head was still spinning with the latest discovery.

"Well, it's getting late, and I'm tired and hungry," said Rick. "I don't know about you guys, but what I wanna do is go back to the lodge before the restaurant closes, have dinner and get some sleep."

Since none of them had had a decent sleep the night before, Pearl and A.J. agreed that it sounded like a good idea.

Exhausted after a long day of work, they rode back to the lodge with little chatter, but Rick and Pearl shared a quiet laugh when A.J. fell asleep resting his head on her shoulder.


	10. Chapter 10

"So, what's next?"

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Pearl asked the Simon brothers over a cup of coffee at the breakfast table the following morning. They all felt rejuvenated after a good night's sleep.

"Are we heading out to First National and find out what's in the deposit box?"

The brothers shook their head simultaneously.

"No," said A.J. "It's one thing to sneak into the sheriff's office and misrepresent where we found the passbook and the key, but it's another to impersonate Roy Porter, a sheriff's deputy. For one, it's a felony, but most of all, it'll compromise the integrity of the evidence if we open the safe deposit box. It could be interpreted as tampering with evidence, and if so determined, the content of the box will be inadmissible in court if this case ever goes to trial."

"For now, let's say we have solid evidence for the killer's motive, and we can turn it in when we're ready to contact the authority." Rick paused briefly. "The problem is, we know why but not who. We need to somehow winnow out twenty-five of twenty-six on the list of suspects. And we gotta do it fast; we don't know how much longer he'll stick around."

"Didn't you say you could check other resorts to see anyone on the list is in the area?"

"We could," said A.J. "But it's labor intensive and time consuming. There may be a better and faster way."

"Like what?"

"Your brothers played football together with Roy and they still live in the same town. They might be able to shed some light on his private life: his friends, associates…"

"Any suspicious behavior," Rick put his two cents in. "This town is so small probably everybody knows what's happening in everybody else's life; who's dating who, whose dog had a litter recently, who's having what for dinner…"

"Do you want me to call my brothers?"

"Nah. It's always best to speak to someone face-to-face. Besides, we can talk to both of them together," said Rick.

"All right then. I'll call and let them know that we're coming over."

_**S&S S&S**_

The Bissers were doing some yard work when the Simons and Pearl arrived. Seeing Rick and A.J. walking behind their sister, one of the twins said something to the other nudging him on the side with his elbow. They started snickering.

Before her brothers could start picking on the Simons, Pearl announced, "I brought a couple of pies from the lodge's restaurant."

"What kind?" asked Pop, eagerly looking up from his chore.

"Pecan and sweet potato." She knew they were their favorites. "I'll put them in the oven. Just heat them up when you're ready to dig in."

"Go ahead and turn on the oven. We're gonna take a break real soon, praps in five, ten minutes," said Pop smacking his lips.

Keeping half an eye on Pearl, who was stepping inside the house, one of the twins—Vance, Rick guessed, as he seemed to be the dominant one—asked, "So, what do you wanna know about Roy?"

Rick wanted to say 'everything' but figured it was more efficient to ask pertinent questions. "I know you two played football with him in high school, but how well did you know him after he became the deputy? Did you have regular contact, like getting together for a drink a few times a week? Did you have the same circle of friends?"

Vance thought for a few moments. "He came back here after he got out of the army. Whenever we ran into each other in town, we talked, sure, but we weren't as close as we'd been in high school."

Vaughn nodded. "Yeah, he had a few army buddies that used to run in the same circles, but the last few years he mostly kept to himself."

"Can you name some of his army buddies?" asked A.J.

"Jimmy Pomeroy, Rich Georgescu, Art Benning…" Vance haltingly recited some names.

"Russ Wingate, Elwood… Jackson, or Johnson," Vaughn pitched in.

A.J. scanned the list of twenty-six names of ALI employees. He shook his head to let his brother know there was no match.

"Do any of them live here?" Rick asked.

The twins laughed humorlessly.

"Who'd want to live in a two-bit town like this if he had a choice?" said Vance. "Roy came back after the service only because he inherited his folks' property and later got a job at the sheriff's office."

Vaughn nodded. "And they weren't too keen on coming here to see him, so Roy had to travel to some other place to meet them most of the time."

"Do you think that's why he and his buddies drifted apart?" A.J. asked.

"Probably it's part of the reason," Vance shrugged. "But after a tour in Nam, he came back a changed man."

"Changed? How so?"

"He started drinking more. And he picked up gambling."

"Yeah," said Vaughn. "The rumor has it he was in debt and had to moonlight to make ends meet."

"Doing what?" asked Rick.

"Worked as a handyman, for instance. He was working for us to do some minor work and keep an eye on our place when we were away," said Vance. "He wasn't doing too good a job though—someone broke into our home while we were in Florida."

"How much debt are we talking about? Do you have any idea? Hundreds, thousands, more?"

Vance snorted at Rick's question. "How should I know? We're not…we were not his financial advisors."

"But we heard he'd been to Vegas more than a few times," Vaughn informed the Simons. "I don't think he ever broke even."

Pop stopped raking the leaves to join the conversation willingly. "He once asked me for a loan."

"Really? How big a loan?" asked Rick his eyes shining with excitement.

"Fifteen thousand."

The revelation stunned everyone, not just the Simons.

"Fifteen thousand? Did you give it to him?" asked Rick.

"No, it was a loan."

"Why'd you do that?" Vance asked resentfully. "You'd never loan us that kind of money."

"You'll get my money when I kick the bucket," Pop snapped at his sons then spoke to the Simons, "When my wife died, P.J. was still in high school. She tried her best to fill her Ma's shoes and take care of us, but she was just a kid. The Porters, Roy's folks, went above and beyond to look after us. Amelia used to stop by with casseroles an' baked goods an' sit for a spell to chat. Dean took care of the business end 'cause I couldn't deal with making payments an' all that kinda stuff at the time. I was so grateful I promised them I'd take good care of their only child if anything should happen to them."

Rick and A.J. realized that the death of Roy Porter had affected him more than his sons.

Treading lightly, A.J. asked, "How long ago was it when he borrowed fifteen thousand from you? Did he pay back any of it?"

"I loaned him the money four, five years ago. For the first few years, he paid whatever and whenever he could."

"After that?" Rick prodded him gently.

"About a year ago, he paid back in full," said Pop proudly.

The Simons instantly recalled the fact that Roy had opened a new bank account and rented a safe deposit box approximately nine months ago.

"Where did he get that kind of money? Did he tell you that?" asked Rick.

Pop shrugged. "Said he'd had a windfall, an' that was fine with me."

"But he continued to work for you doing minor chores and keeping an eye on your place. Why?"

"I told you, there'd been a lot of break-ins in the neighborhood. Our immediate neighbors on both sides of this property sold their places an' moved out. I'm the only holdout around here."

"When did they move out?"

"A year or so ago."

"A year ago? Don't you have new neighbors?"

"Not that I know of. The places are still vacant as far as I know."

Before he could ask another question, Rick felt his brother's hand on his arm.

"Rick. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"What exactly am I thinking?"

"That many of the past events Mr. Bisser just described took place almost concurrently: Roy's alleged windfall, his new bank account, neighbors moving out."

Rick thought about it for a moment and grinned. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking." He then asked Pop, "Are those vacant houses located on this street your place is on?"

"Yup." Pop nodded. "The old McNary's is about a mile west, the Osborne's is almost a mile and a half east."

"Are we going to take a look at those places now, Rick?"

Rick was a bit surprise to hear Pearl's voice behind him. She had sort of sneaked upon him.

"No," said he firmly turning around. "Me and A.J. are going to check them out. You, on the other hand, sit tight until we come back."

She started to object, but he didn't let her. "Remember what happened at Roy's place?"

"What did happen there?" Pop inquired sharply.

"There was a man lurking in the garage." A.J. did not want to alarm the old man unnecessarily.

"Was he the guy that tried to kidnap you, P.J.?" asked Pop.

Pearl did not know what to say; she had been too afraid to look up while lying on the ground.

"Most likely," Rick replied. "But we don't know for sure 'cause he was wearing a ski mask."

A.J. smiled at her. "It's safer for you to stay here. You can spot anyone approaching in the broad daylight. And we'll be back to pick you up as soon as we finish checking out the neighbors' houses."

Pearl did not want to be apart from the Simon brothers, but when her father ordered her to stay put, she reluctantly agreed to do so like an obedient little girl.

As she pushed open the front door, she turned around to see Rick's Power Wagon making a U-turn. A.J. was smiling cheerfully, waving good-bye. Nevertheless, she shivered sensing something terrible was about to happen.


	11. Chapter 11

Rick and A.J. decided to visit the McNary's place first solely because it was the closer of the two places.

"Do you think Roy had something to do with the neighbors moving out?" asked Rick, parking his truck behind a clump of bushes on the edge of the McNary's property.

The old mailbox with numerous dings and dents still bore the previous residents' name.

"Possible," said A.J. as he got out of the truck. "If that's the case, he was either a willing participant in the sabotage, or blackmailing the vandal."

They began to make their way to the main house cautiously.

"If so, what do you think the perp's after besides the cufflink and Roy's bank stuff?" Rick whispered.

A.J. shrugged. "Something valuable?"

"Like buried treasure?"

Sensing his brother's boyish dream and enthusiasm, A.J. had to suppress a giggle. "Rick, the pirates roamed the high seas, not the mountains."

"Coulda been some bandit in the Old West that made away with gold coins and bullion bars."

As they debated and speculated what might be the root cause of this case, they reached the detached garage.

"Hey. Know what I'm thinking, A.J.?"

"Hmm?"

"A vacant house in a city isn't a safe place with squatters and transients and junkies coming and going, but…"

"A vacant house in a rural area is an excellent place for someone to hide."

Eagerly the brothers looked around to find the best way to get into the garage.

There was a door on one side of the garage. Rick cleaned the window covered with grime to have a peek.

He squinted for a moment then his face broke into a grin. "I see a car!"

"Anyone there?"

Shaking his head, Rick started picking the lock. He opened the creaky door slowly and stepped inside with A.J. closely behind him.

In the middle of the large garage there was a lone car: Chrysler Cordoba

Rick put his hand on the hood; it was cold. He tried the door on the driver side and found it unlocked. He slid into the seat and reached for the glove compartment looking for the registration, or the rental agreement.

"What did you find?" A.J. asked when he saw his brother holding a piece of paper.

Rick looked up from the document with a huge grin. "This car belongs to Emmett F. O'Brien of Sedona, AZ."

A.J. scanned the list of twenty-six men. His hands that held it shook slightly with high expectation. As his eyes fell on the name in the middle of the column, his heart leapt up.

"Rick," His elation was palpable in his voice. "We got him!"

"What's he do at ALI?" asked Rick getting out of the vehicle.

"He's a…" A.J. looked up with a puzzled expression. "A geologist."

Rick's face lit up. "What did I tell you—buried treasure!"

"Rick…"

Before A.J. could dismiss his claim, he added, "Or, a mother lode of precious metal."

"You're reaching, Rick," said A.J., shaking his head, but he could not deny that his brother's optimism was catching. Only Rick could talk his levelheaded sibling into something totally outrageous.

"It doesn't seem O'Brien has done any excavation here." A.J. said observing the floor of the garage.

"Let's check out the main building then. The car engine's completely cooled off, so this O'Brien guy must be somewhere close."

The brothers left the garage to size up the house. During the initial reconnaissance, they found a motorcycle hidden behind the bushes by the front porch. It was also cool to touch.

"I know our guy's here. I can feel it." Rick was getting psyched up. "I'll take the front door, you go around to the back entrance."

A.J. nodded. "Give me a moment to get ready—I need some time to work on the lock. Shall we synchronize our watches so we'll be able to enter the premises at the same time?"

After the synchronization was complete, Rick said, "It's about two minutes to ten. We get in on the hour."

A.J. took off with a nod.

Rick climbed a few steps and stood on the porch. He had to tread softly on the creaky boards. He assumed that a lock on an old house like this should be easy to pick and got the burglar's tool out of his pocket again. He also drew his gun.

Getting closer to the front door, he noticed the welcome mat had been thrown out of its rightful place but did not think much of it.

When he set his right foot on the mat, the board underneath gave way. The foot went through the hole and landed and turned awkwardly on a small rock protruding from the ground. The impact sent a flash of pain up his leg making him gasp.

His arms flailing, he fell on the deck. He instinctively unclenched his hands, and the burglar's tool and his Magnum dropped on the deck, skittering away from his grasp.

As he desperately tried to get up, the front door swung open, and the tall, curly-haired man holding a fireplace poker appeared in front of him.

Rick and Emmett O'Brien stared at each other for a brief moment. Seeing the PI's empty hands, the geologist took a quick look around and picked up the revolver. He tossed the poker into the bush by the porch.

O'Brien waved the gun to get Rick to stand up.

"Where's your partner?"

Standing on one foot, Rick remained stoically silent.

"I know he's somewhere around here. Tell him to get over here."

When Rick refused to obey him, O'Brien cocked the hammer and fired a shot to let him know he could handle this firearm.

Though the shot was not aimed at him, Rick could feel the bullet whizzing by.

A.J. was about to open the backdoor when a shot rang out. He froze but only for a fraction of a second. With his heart pounding, he ran back to the front yard with his Smith & Wesson drawn and ready.

As he turned the corner and the front porch came into his view, he saw a tall stranger, undoubtedly O'Brien, standing next to his brother.

He was holding the Magnum to Rick's head.

"Come over here." O'Brien commanded A.J. "Put your gun on the deck slowly and slide it to me."

"Don't do it," said Rick through his clenched teeth. "He has to kill us anyway 'cause we know who he is. Isn't that right, O'Brien?"

"True." O'Brien smiled maliciously. "But you can stay alive so long as you make yourselves useful. And you know I don't hesitate to use lethal force."

There was nothing else A.J. could do but follow the order.

O'Brien caught A.J.'s Smith and Wesson with one foot. He quickly picked it up and pocketed it.

He stared down at A.J. and said, "All right, let's hear it; what do you have on me?"

A.J. opened his mouth but did not know where and how to start.

O'Brien cocked the hammer of Rick's Magnum again. "Ten, nine, eight…"

"We know your name is Emmett O'Brien, and you're a geologist working for ALI." A.J. spoke as fast as he could.

O'Brien stopped the countdown. "So you found the cufflink."

A.J. nodded.

"Where is it?"

"At the lodge we're staying at." A.J. lied trying not to provoke him.

"What else do you know?"

"That Roy was on the take."

O'Brien became animated. "So you found Roy's bank passbook? And a safe deposit box key?"

"Yes."

"Where are they?"

A.J. hesitated for a briefest moment. "In our truck."

It was another lie; they were securely stored in the lodge's safe.

This time, it was O'Brien who was in quandary: should he take both snoops to the truck, or just one of them, or neither? He was, after all, a geologist, and his expertise was rocks and minerals, not criminal activities.

Rick seized the moment of O'Brien's indecision and said to his brother, "You gotta help me get off the porch. I twisted my ankle."

"Sure." A.J. played along with Rick.

"No," said O'Brien as A.J. started approaching. "Your buddy stays here. You are going to show me where the truck is and hand over the banking items."

The brothers' reverse psychology worked, and because O'Brien was not a hardened criminal, he was easy to manipulate. If one of them could stay behind and out of sight, he might be able to break free.

"You," O'Brien gestured toward A.J. "Go inside and get a roll of duct tape. It's in the duffle bag by the fireplace. One misstep, and your partner will sport a couple of holes in the head."

As A.J. placed his hand on the doorknob, O'Brien gave him additional instructions, "Don't try anything cute, and come back here in fifteen seconds, or else."

He raised his left arm to look at his wristwatch. "Okay, go. One…"

A.J. rushed inside as O'Brien continued to count aloud.

"…twelve…"

O'Brien grinned when A.J. scurried back with the tape. He made Rick take a few steps towards one of the porch posts by grasping the collar of his jacket.

"Sit down and hug the post."

Rick lowered himself carefully so as not to aggravate his injured ankle.

"And you," O'Brien motioned to A.J. "Tape his wrists really tight. I'm going to check on it, so you'd better do a damn good job."

After A.J. finished his task, O'Brien told him to step back and tugged at the tape. Satisfied with it, he got off the porch.

"All right, let's go."

He grabbed A.J.'s arm and prodded him with the barrel of the revolver.

Keeping an eye on his brother and the geologist, Rick raised his wrists. O'Brien had been so preoccupied he had not noticed that the end of the tape was on the topside where Rick could easily reach with his teeth. Quietly he began gnawing at the restraint.

Contrary to his calm demeanor, A.J.'s mind was working feverishly to come up with the best plan to break away from O'Brien once they got to the truck. He was becoming more desperate with each step forward. The tail end of Rick's Power Wagon was now visible.

Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of flapping wings interrupted his thoughts. He halted to look up and saw a large crow swooping down from the sky.

The crow flew straight to the spot where A.J. and O'Brien were standing. At the first menacing caw, A.J. realized it was coming after him for raiding its nest and ducked just a moment before its attack.

As its target shifted at the last second, the crow flew right into O'Brien's face, savagely gouging his face. It was going for his eyes. He screamed in surprise and let go of A.J. to instinctively protect his face.

A.J. started sprinting taking advantage of the situation.

Realizing that its intended target was fleeing, the crow changed its course and went after him.

His face still smarting, O'Brien tried to take aim at A.J. but fumbled and dropped the gun. He picked it up and raised his arm to train it on the blond.

From his perch, Rick was able to clearly see what was going on and screamed, "Hit the deck! Hit the deck!"

Out of the blue, Pearl appeared from out of nowhere and tackled O'Brien hard—much harder than a regular NFL linebacker would. Had she been a pro football player, she and her spectacular attack would have made the play of the week. She took him down only half a second before the gun went off.

A.J. heard the report of the gun before his body landed on the ground. He had no idea if he had been hit or not.

O'Brien went down with a loud thud. The impact of hitting the ground with a two-hundred-pound-plus woman on his back knocked the wind out of him.

Pearl wasted no time—she straddled on his back before he could catch his breath and started bashing his head on the ground emitting a high-pitched, banshee scream.

Distraught, Rick was also screaming, "A.J.! A.J.!"

Not knowing what had happened, A.J. cautiously took a backward glance then quickly sat up with his mouth agape. "Wow…" He whispered in awe tinged with something akin to fear.

"A.J.! Are you all right?" Rick asked again.

"Yeah, I'm all right." A.J. shouted back.

"Then help her, for God's sake!" Rick yelled at his brother, who was still admiring Pearl's sheer strength.

"Oh, right…"

A.J. picked himself up and ran back to be on her side. In his opinion, however, it was O'Brien who needed rescuing. He picked up Rick's Magnum that had flown out of the rogue geologist's hand when she had tackled him.

"Pearl? Hey, Pearl. It's okay—we got this under control now."

He tried to put his hand on her shoulder to calm her down but hastily withdrew it when he saw her face contorted with rage.

At the same time, she saw fright in his eyes, which instantly brought her back to her senses.

"A.J.," said she, her voice a little hoarse from all that screaming. "Are you all right?"

He nodded and asked, "Are you?"

She looked down at the still form of O'Brien. "I'm doing remarkably well," replied she slowing rising to her feet. "I suppose growing up with a couple of oversized, obnoxious brothers finally paid dividends."

"You know how to handle guns, don't you?"

"Around here, anyone old enough to go to school can hunt, A.J."

He handed the revolver to her after retrieving his own gun from the pocket of O'Brien's jacket. "Here. Please keep an eye on him. I'll go get Rick."

A.J. found his brother still tied to the post of the porch though he had been desperately trying to rip the duct tape off his wrists by pushing the post away from his body with his good foot. The tape was still intact, and his hands were chafed and discolored due to the decrease in blood flow.

"Stop doing that, Rick. You're making things worse."

A.J. found the end of the tape and peeled it off as quickly as possible.

Rick gingerly stood up on one foot shaking his hands to get the blood circulation going.

"How's your ankle?" asked A.J. "Do you think it's broken?"

Rick thought about it for a moment and shook his head. "No, I don't think so, but it's sprained pretty bad, and I can't put any weight on it."

A.J. let his brother lean on him, and stepped off the porch. As they began walking together towards Pearl, he heard a rustling noise nearby and looked around nervously.

"Oh, no!"

He saw his winged nemesis flopping in the undergrowth with an injured wing. He realized that the crow not only helped him get away from O'Brien but also took the bullet meant for him.

He removed his jacket to catch the bird. Seeing its foe approaching with what seemed to be a malevolent agenda, the crow's struggle to escape became more frantic, but it just could not get off the ground. It let out a distressed cry when the jacked dropped and enveloped it.

"Shh… It's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you."

A.J. gently picked up the injured bird wrapped in the jacket whispering soothingly. It twitched a few more times but eventually quieted down suckled by the darkness.

"How bad is it?" asked Rick.

"I think it'll be all right, but I'll let a vet decide if they can patch up the broken wing." A.J. paused cocking his head. "Maybe they can take a look at your ankle on the side too."

"Oh, ha, ha," said Rick humorlessly.

"It's just a thought. I mean, a place like this probably has more vets than regular doctors."

Teasing each other to relieve the tension, the brothers traced the way back to be reunited with Pearl.

She was still standing over O'Brien's prone body holding the Magnum in her hand. He had not moved and was still unconscious.

"I told you to stay away from this place," Rick started to tell her off, but seeing her face fall, his tone quickly softened, "But I'm glad you didn't. Thanks for saving our hides, darlin'. We really owe you one."

She instantly brightened up. To her astonishment, he gave her a quick, one-armed hug and a little peck on the cheek, making her grin from ear to ear.

"How did you find us?"

"I sneaked out of my room and found my old bicycle in the garage. I didn't know which way you'd gone, but I heard a gunshot and pedaled like a maniac to get here."

"Thank goodness that you did. You're our hero," said A.J. to Pearl. "I have one more favor to ask of you though."

"Sure. What is it?"

"Could you ride in the back of the pickup to stay with Rick and O'Brien and keep an eye on them while I drive all of us back to your father's place? I'm sure it won't happen, but I don't want O'Brien to take advantage of my brother's injury."

"Okay…" She sounded puzzled.

"Rick can't drive with a bad foot; you can't drive a stick shift. And I assume there's no phone service here—I'm sure the previous occupant terminated the phone service, so we have to go elsewhere to make a call to the state police." A.J. elaborated.

The brothers unbuckled O'Brien's belt and used it to tie his hands behind his back. He was coming around by then but did not put up a fight to be led to the truck.

While A.J. was pulling O'Brien up onto the flatbed, Pearl squatted and put her arms around Rick's thighs just below the buttocks.

"Hey!"

Before he was able to protest, she effortlessly lifted him up, and his butt landed on the tailgate. He threw his brother a warning glare to discourage him from making any smart-ass remark.

"Loosen up, Rick. There's nothing wrong with getting a leg-up from the fairer sex." A.J. jumped off the flatbed chuckling at his own pun. "One of these days, you'll be able to look back and laugh at this."

He glanced at Rick's scowling face and said, "Or not."

He gave the Magnum back to his brother and picked up his jacket in which the crow was wrapped.

As he settled in a comfortable position on the flatbed, Rick heard A.J. laughing all the way to the driver's seat of the pickup.

_This vacation definitely turned out to be a memorable one for all the wrong reasons_, thought Rick with a sigh.


	12. Chapter 12

After the state police showed up at the Bisser's, the Simon brothers and Pearl were sucked into a vortex of frenzied activities one by one and lost sight of each other.

Pearl identified Emmett O'Brien as her would-be kidnapper who had been at the crime scene at or near the time of Roy Porter's murder. She made a detailed statement spending most of the day with the police.

A.J. endured several hours of interviews by different officers explaining how he and Rick had become involved and what they had discovered so far. He then took a couple of officers to the lodge to retrieve Roy's passbook and key.

Rick was taken to a general practitioner's office in the Pit to have his ankle examined and treated first then had to go through the same rigmarole as A.J., Pearl—and Sheriff Upham. He had a glimpse of the sheriff passing by when one of the troopers opened the door of the interview room to get some refreshments. Upham threw him a murderous glare before the door closed.

When Rick finally finished giving a statement, it was already past six o'clock. His brother was waiting for him outside the interview room. A.J. looked beat, and Rick figured he probably looked the same.

"Hey. You done for now?" asked Rick.

A.J. nodded tiredly.

"Where's Pearl?"

"Her father took her home about an hour ago." A.J. cast his eyes on Rick's crutches and brace. "How's your ankle?"

Rick shrugged. "No fracture, just a bad sprain. Icing helped some. I can probably ditch the crutches in a day or two."

"Did the police fill you in on O'Brien?"

"Yeah. He took the fifth and requested a lawyer."

A.J. sighed nodding his head. "That's what I heard. There's not much else we can do right now, so we might as well go back to the lodge. Pearl's brother brought your truck here. We can leave whenever you're ready."

The brothers were happy to see the Pit in the rearview mirror. During the ride back to Juniper Lodge, they were uncharacteristically reticent after spending most of the day talking.

Back at the lodge, they opted for in-room dining and turned in early.

When his head hit the pillow, Rick detected a vaguely familiar scent on it. He realized, just before he drifted off, it was the smell of Pearl's hair. He found it rather pleasant.

As he fell asleep, there was a hint of smile on his lips.

_**S&S S&S**_

The following morning, A.J. let his brother sleep in, left a note and headed back to the Pit alone.

He went straight to the veterinarian's clinic and asked for the update on the crow that had saved his life and maybe Rick's as well.

"Oh, he's mending nicely and doing fine. He's real lucky the bullet only grazed the wing, considering the size of it," said the receptionist with a smile. "But it may take a while before he can fly again"

"May I take a look at him?"

"Certainly. Doctor Taylor is seeing another patient, but you can go to the backroom where cages are and visit your friend."

A.J. followed the barks and meows to the room where the four-legged and winged patients were lodged temporarily.

As he passed by the cages, some dogs barked, some others whimpered; most cats were indifferent, just annoyed by the racket the dumb dogs were making, but a couple of felines came up to the bars and rubbed their bodies against them.

He found the crow at the far end of the row with the injured wing immobilized to prevent him from flapping it.

The bird opened his eyes as if he had sensed someone's presence. He almost instantaneously recognized who was standing over him and became agitated hopping and making distress calls.

"Shhh! Hey, don't do that. Calm down, all right? Here, look what I got."

He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out the contents hurriedly: the shiny baubles he had taken from the crow's nest minus his fountain pen and the cufflink.

The bird was still breathing rapidly but at least stopped crying when he saw his lost treasures on A.J.'s palm.

"Here's my peace offering."

He unlatched the cage door deliberately so as not to rankle the crow and placed the junk in the corner of the cage.

Closing the cage, he bent forward to look the bird in the eye. "There, you can have it all. So no hard feelings, okay?"

"Nevermore, nevermore."

Startled by the grave utterance, A.J. whipped around and found Pearl standing at the doorway with a puckish grin.

"Oh, very funny." He grinned back. "How did you find me here?"

"I talked to Rick, and he told me you'd be in town to check on the bird and stuff," said she walking into the room.

He nodded and asked gently, "How are you holding up, Pearl?"

Her smile faltered. "I'm doing fine…I think. The last few days have been surreal, and I keep thinking, 'Okay, Pearl, this is a dream, but you're going to wake up just about now.' You know what I mean?"

He nodded again.

"But it's not a dream, is it?"

"Afraid not."

She took his hand in hers as if to convince herself that he was real.

"I really missed you guys last night." She said softly. "Isn't it funny though? We've known each other only for a few days, but I feel much safer and more alive when I'm with you and Rick than when I'm with my family."

A.J. smiled. "That's an interesting juxtaposition of adjectives. I must admit I occasionally do feel more alive and _jittery_ when I'm with my brother, but that's because it's often downright risky and unsafe to be around him."

They giggled like a couple of kids who were sharing a secret.

"Oh, by the way, I'm inviting you for dinner at six this evening," said Pearl. "This time, I'm serving a real home-cooked meal, not some takeouts."

"Why, thank you. I'm looking forward to it. I'll let Rick know…"

"He knows already. And he's accepted my invitation."

That took A.J. by surprise. "He has? I mean, that's great! Can I bring anything? Wine, desserts…?"

"Just yourself and Rick would be fine."

They walked out of the vet's office waving at the receptionist. They chatted a few more minutes before they parted their ways.

_**S&S S&S**_

Rick and A.J. arrived at the Bisser residence at six o'clock sharp. As they entered the foyer, they walked right into Pearl's welcoming arms.

"I'm so glad you made it." She squeezed them tightly to let them know how much she had missed their presence and cast her eyes on Rick's foot. "And I see you don't need crutches anymore."

Rick nodded. "Yeah, and I probably won't be needing the brace by tomorrow morning."

The mouth-watering aroma of the feast she had been preparing was wafting from the kitchen and the dining room.

He inhaled deeply and sighed happily. "Mmm… Smells yummy. I bet this is what Heaven smells like."

"Too bad you'll never be able to find that out."

A.J.'s wry remark made Pearl laugh out loud.

She led the brothers to the dining room where her family had been waiting patiently—or more likely, impatiently.

The sheer volume of the food on the table was a sight to behold.

"Did you cook all this by yourself?" Astounded and in disbelief, Rick asked Pearl.

"Wait till you taste it. She cooks as good as her Ma—maybe better." Pop was bursting with pride.

The moment Pearl and the Simons took their seats, the Bisser men started passing the serving trays and piling the food on their plates.

This time Rick and A.J. could tolerate the twins' table manner, or lack thereof, because they knew what they were in for, and that Pearl had cooked a lot of finger food: fried chicken, barbecued ribs, cornbread, corn on the cob…

A.J. watched in awe the other men chew, chomp, gnaw and lick their fingers without uttering a single word. Once again, they reminded him of a pride of lions and lionesses in Serengeti.

"People always say silence is the best compliment for the chef." He said to Pearl in an attempt to start a civil dinner conversation.

"Thank you, A.J., but my cooking skills pale before your talent for investigation," she said comically bowing her head.

"Oh, hey. About that." Rick spoke up putting down the drumstick he'd been working on. "We got good news."

"Really?"

A.J. nodded. "I talked to one of the troopers who are investigating the murder this afternoon after we met at the vet, and he told me O'Brien's now cooperating with the authorities."

Pearl seemed puzzled. "I thought he requested an attorney."

"He did," said Rick. "A darn good one, it seems. Looks like he laid his cards on the table to let his client know the odds are against him."

"What my brother means is that the police gathered O'Brien's financial information to back up the claim that he was bribing Roy, among other things."

"But what was the bribe for?"

"I bet Roy was helpin' O'Brien get rid of my neighbors."

Pop's offhand comment stunned the brothers into silence.

"How'd you know?" asked Rick after a moment.

"O'Brien's been after their properties and mine for ten, fifteen years."

"Whoa, whoa, back up just a little bit." Rick interrupted him. "If you knew about Roy and O'Brien, why didn't you tell us? And how the heck did you figure O'Brien was trying to grab your land?"

"Well," Pop drawled still holding the rib he had been gnawing on. "I just remembered this O'Brien fella's name when Pearl mentioned it yesterday."

By the look on the PIs' faces, he could tell it was not enough an explanation, so he continued.

"Almost fifteen years ago, he sent me an official-lookin' letter sayin' he was interested in purchasin' my place. I thought it was odd 'cause it was right after his company'd finished building Juniper Lodge. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, so I talked to Paul McNary and Zach Osborne, an' it turned out they also got the same letter. We all thought it was mighty peculiar."

"What made you think that?" asked Rick.

"The letter was typed on the company letterhead…"

"Arnold Lindahl."

"No, Zenith Construction. ALI acquired it about a coupla years after the lodge was built."

"Are you familiar with ALI?"

"Sure. It's a blue-chip company. I'm a shareholder."

When they had first met, Rick had pegged Pop as a country simpleton, but in fact, the old man had more layers than an onion.

"Anyway…ah… Where was I?"

"The letter."

"Oh, yeah. The O'Brien fella used the Zenith letterhead, but he crossed out the office phone number and listed his. I never called him though."

"Then what happened?"

Pop shrugged plunking down the rib on the plate. "Nothin' until last year."

"That's when you had a series of break-ins in the neighborhood."

Pearl put her fork down and asked Rick, "What was he after? What's his motive?"

"Good question. Well, according to our source…"

"He got a whiff of the oil reservoir we're sittin' on, I reckon."

Pop's statement floored everyone—even the twins stopped eating for a few seconds.

"You knew that too?" asked Rick incredulously.

"Sure. I got suspicious after receivin' the letter, so I hired an expert to study our land."

"Why did you neglect to mention something like that to us during our investigation?"

Pop was unfazed by Rick's choleric tone. "If you know about the oil, you also should know we cain't do a damn thing about it 'cause there's a rock layer on top. I didn't think it was important enough to tell you boys."

"But why did he wait for almost fifteen years twiddling his thumbs then start harassing us all of a sudden?" said Pearl.

Everyone at the table turned their heads to Pop's direction to see if he had the answer for her question. When no words came forth from his mouth, Rick secretly rejoiced to regain the control of the conversation. It was nice to be able to report the update his way.

"Because he and his business partners were, and I quote, on the cusp of a breakthrough in oil-mining technology."

A.J. nodded and expounded on Rick's comment. "When O'Brien was an employee of Zenith scouting for a building site for a new commercial building, namely Juniper Lodge, fifteen years ago, he was initially planning to recommend this area but found the petroleum reservoir, so he recommended the company build the lodge on the other side of the mountain. As a geologist, he of course knew the conventional drilling method would not work to get at the oil, but he and a few other scientists have been working on a new technique. Though they haven't been able to perfect it just yet, O'Brien wanted to get a claim on your land and the surrounding area before the word on this new technology got out and reached the landowners' ears. But the real irony is that he received a commendation and the cufflinks last year for this work"

"Makes sense," said Pop philosophically and resumed gnawing on the rib.

"But how did Roy get involved in this? How did he and O'Brien meet?" asked Pearl.

"Another good question," Rick smiled approvingly. "One of Roy's army buddies is a relative of O'Brien's, and he casually mentioned his pal, the deputy in the Pit, when O'Brien asked him if he knew someone living here."

"O'Brien was looking for a local-hire to vandalize this neighborhood hoping that we'd get fed up and leave?"

"Hey, you're getting pretty good at this," Rick praised her. "He knew Roy was in money trouble and lured him into his scheme with small loans at first—fifty bucks here, a hundred there… When he learned the deputy owed a big chunk of money to your dad, he upped the ante. He offered fifty thousand, a gift, not a loan, to Roy."

"And he took the money…" Pop muttered.

"Mr. Bisser," said A.J. solemnly. "Roy did so only because he was desperate to pay you back. Though he agreed to drive you and your neighbors away, he never caused damage to your property."

"But there was a…"

"That was O'Brien, not Roy, who did that," Rick cut Pop off. "As a matter of fact, that's why they had a major falling-out. O'Brien was getting impatient and demanded the money back if Roy didn't hold up his end of the bargain when they met for the last time at the Lake."

A.J. nodded. "Roy didn't have fifty thousand, they had a heated argument, in which he threatened O'Brien that he'd make a full confession to the sheriff if he kept harassing you. O'Brien says he doesn't remember picking up the rock, let alone hitting the deputy with it."

Silence prevailed for a while as everyone struggled to make sense of Roy's death.

"Roy had utmost respect for you, Mr. Bisser." A.J. said softly.

"Yeah, that's the Roy I knew. He was always loyal to his family and friends. Nothin' could take that part outa him—money, a tour of duty in a hellhole. Not a thing."

"Rick, A.J., we're all indebted to you. Putting up with me is one thing, but it's so comforting to know that Roy was a good person to the end," said Pearl.

Although none of her family members seemed to have lost their appetite, she wanted to lighten the conversation for the Simons' sake.

"Now that the case's solved, I hope you'll be able to concentrate on our dinner."

"No worries. I'm on it." Rick looked up and grinned. "By the way, have I told you this is the best barbecue I've ever tasted?"

She was absolutely tickled pink. He noticed she had a lovely smile.

"And please save some room for dessert. We have red velvet cake, chocolate cheesecake, blackberry pie…"

After the excellent meal and the decadent dessert, A.J. and even Rick willingly helped Pearl with cleaning. A.J. did the dishes, Rick dried them and Pearl put them away, talking and laughing.

A.J. glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen and was astonished to find it was close to ten thirty.

"Excuse me," he interrupted Rick, who was recounting a wild joy ride he'd had during his teenage years. "It's getting late. We should be going before we burn a hole in the welcome mat."

"Don't be silly. You will never wear out your welcome!" declared Pearl. "And I don't want you to leave just yet."

Her bold statement surprised herself, but there was no going back.

"We have plenty of room. Why don't you spend a night here?" After a beat, she added, "Please?"

A.J. hesitated to answer, but Rick did not.

"Sure. Why not?"

It caught A.J. off guard, and he could not help but stare at his brother. Pearl simply beamed; she was over the moon.

"I'll let my father know and get your rooms ready! I'll be right back!"

Watching Pearl bound out of the kitchen, A.J. said to Rick, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're finally warming up to her."

"Nah. I'm doing you a favor so you don't have to drive all the way back to the lodge."

Of course, A.J. knew better than to believe it.


	13. Chapter 13

Rick and A.J. were talking in one of the two connecting rooms Pearl had prepared for them when someone knocked on the door.

It was, as they had guessed, Pearl.

"Hi. I know it's late, but I heard you talking when I walked by."

"Hey, no problem," said Rick. "I'm a night owl anyway."

"Is there anything wrong?" asked A.J. letting her in.

"Oh, no, nothing like that."

She came into the room with her hands behind the back.

"It's been so crazy for the last few days I forgot to tell you a bit of good news that I received yesterday." She paused as if to wait for the drum roll. "I'm going to the Met's National Council Audition!"

"Oh, Pearl, that's fantastic!" A.J. immediately sprang to his feet to congratulate her with a hug.

Rick scratched his head and said, "I didn't know the Mets nationally audition singers."

A.J. and Pearl exchanged a quick glance and burst into laughter although hers was more of a polite giggle. She could not cover her mouth because she had a couple of bottles in one hand, a stack of glasses in the other.

"We're not talking about the New York Mets, Rick, but you got the geographical part right," said A.J. chuckling. "She's going to Metropolitan Opera's audition for young performers."

Seeing Rick's baffled look, he added, "The Met is one of the top five opera houses in the world."

"So if you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere?"

"You'd better believe it, Frankie."

Eyeing the bottles and the glasses Pearl had brought, Rick said, "What are you waiting for then? That's a darn good cause for celebration, and I see you got something to celebrate with."

"They've only granted me a spot to perform in the competition, and there's no guarantee that I'll be one of the winners," said Pearl demurely. "But to commemorate this occasion, I brought a bottle of Merlot from Napa for you two."

"What's in the other bottle?" asked Rick pointing at a brown bottle with no label.

"This," Pearl grinned, "is what we call Bisser Bomb—it's our family moonshine my father makes."

Rick grinned back. "Hmm… That sounds like a challenge. You're offering namby-pamby vino to us 'cause you don't think we can handle your Bisser Bomb?"

"No, it's not that, but this is pretty powerful, and the hangover you might get from it could be equally powerful. If you want to try it, I'll pour you some though."

"Bring it on, little lady." There was no way Rick would back down from this kind of dare. He'd never let anyone—especially a woman—drink him under the table.

"What about you, A.J.? Would you like to try it?"

"I, uh…"

"Nah, give him the wine," said Rick.

"Excuse me?" A.J. was miffed. "I can speak for myself, thank you."

Rick shrugged off A.J.'s remark. "So, you don't want the wine?"

"No!"

As he uttered the word, A.J. wondered what exactly had happened. He did want the Merlot, not some crude moonshine.

As he was urgently trying to come up with some way to back out without losing face, he heard his brother say, "Oh, come on, A.J. You don't want some stuff called Bisser Bomb, do ya?"

"Yes, I do."

It was absolutely maddening—Rick had always been a master manipulator who could make A.J. do something he did not want to, but this time, he wasn't even trying.

Rick shook his head. "All right, Pearl. Give him just a little."

She uncorked the brown bottle and grabbed one of the large glasses. As she generously poured the homebrew, she happily exclaimed, "Bombs away!"

She handed the glass to A.J., and he noted it was half full, but he was not being optimistic.

As he wondered with trepidation what kind of predicament he was in, Rick said with a smirk, "Got cold feet?"

Those three little words pushed A.J. over the edge; he took a mouthful of the moonshine. Rick sure knew how to push his buttons.

He could think of a number of adjectives to describe the taste of the booze in his mouth, but 'refined,' 'exquisite' and plain 'good' were not among them.

When he finally swallowed it, it left a wake of devastation along the esophagus, all the way down to the stomach. It felt like a nuclear meltdown.

With two pairs of eyes watching him closely, he tried to suppress a cough in vain. Once it was out, he kept on coughing, which made breathing difficult. Tears started to well up.

Instead of getting concerned, Rick and Pearl seemed amused like a couple of teenagers who had offered a cigarette to an unsuspecting little kid for wicked fun.

"What did I tell ya?" said Rick grinning and shaking his head.

"I'm doing fine," wheezed A.J. sounding anything but. "Now your turn."

Rick had his glass in his hand and raised it as if to toast.

"Here's to you, me lady."

When he swallowed a healthy dose of Pop Special, a look of amazement replaced a big smirk on his face. It was followed by a muffled cough a few seconds later.

"It has a kick, doesn't it?" Pearl smiled a wicked smile sipping the same drink from her glass.

"If a blowtorch can kick, yes." He sounded husky. "You like this stuff?"

"I suppose it's an acquired taste like some delicacies overseas: half-hatched eggs, durian…"

"Half-hatched eggs? You eat them?" Rick asked in disbelief.

"Not me personally, but they're poplar food in Southeast Asia. They're so popular you can get them at movie theaters, or so I heard."

"Ewww! That's disgusting! Now I don't wanna know what durian is."

"It's called the king of fruits and widely popular in Southeast Asia because of its rich, creamy taste. Orangutans are also fond of the fruit." A.J. supplied the information Rick did not ask for.

"That doesn't sound so…"

"People get really creative when it comes to the description of its smell though, ranging from gym socks to putrefaction or excrement…"

"You just don't know where to stop, do you?" Rick scowled.

Giggling, Pearl asked, "Can I get you a glass of wine now?"

"Nah. Compared to those revolting delicacies, this is like elixir." Rick sipped his drink to show his appreciation.

"How about you, A.J.? Would you like some wine?"

A.J. shook his head. "Too late. Bisser Bomb blew up my taste buds to smithereens."

When Pearl's laughter tapered off, Rick raised his glass again.

"I'd like to propose a toast on this special occasion."

She looked astounded and delighted at the same time.

"To your success and glory."

"Hear, hear!" A.J. shouted enthusiastically raising his glass.

"Break a leg, and all that jazz."

"Sing loud and shatter glass!"

They clinked their glasses and took a swig of their drinks. A.J. coughed again but not for long.

"Thank you, guys." Pearl flashed a brief but radiant smile.

"So, are you ready for the audition?" asked Rick.

"Well, it's not like we fly into the Big Apple the night before and go to the audition at the Met the following day. All the participants receive intensive training for weeks prior to the audition. We get personal voice lessons, attend workshops where we critique each other…"

Rick's knowledge on opera was severely limited, and its largest source was Saturday morning cartoons. Nevertheless, he became fascinated as Pearl passionately spoke about the world he had never known existed.

In the middle of her narrative, A.J. got up abruptly from the bed he had been sitting on. Rick first thought he was going to the bathroom, but he made a beeline for the dresser. He grabbed the brown bottle on the top of the furniture and refilled his empty glass.

"What do you think you're doing?" Rick got out of his chair and placed his hand on his brother's arm. "You better pace yourself. This is not your garden-variety wine."

"You worry like an old lady, Rick." A.J. snickered and took a few wobbly steps.

"Oh, man. You're drunk already."

"No, I'm not dunk!" A.J. snapped but, realizing he had just said something semantically bizarre, started giggling.

"Yes, you are. You can't even speak right." Rick tried to take the glass out of his hand.

A.J. put up a fight protecting his precious possession from his brother's grabby hand. "I tole you, I'm not dwunk!"

When the words did not come out right yet again, it struck him really funny, and he started laughing like he was unhinged.

"That's it. You're going to bed." Rick dragged him to the bed and pushed him down on the mattress.

"Hey! Don't tell me what to do!" A.J. protested. "An' I'm not sleepy."

As if to prove otherwise, he yawned. Rick chuckled and took the drink out of his hand.

"Hey, I'm not done with it."

"Yes, you are," said Rick authoritatively. "And I bet you're gonna have one hell of a hangover in the morning, so you might as well get a head start and have a good night's sleep."

A.J. whined a little more but eventually lay down on the bed mumbling something unintelligible. Yawning again he tried to keep his eyes open but could not.

Sipping the homemade whisky, Pearl cast her eyes towards A.J., who had transitioned from the state of drunken stupor to alcohol-induced slumber.

"Your brother looks so adorable when he's asleep," said she with a maternal smile.

"Lots of women find him adorable even when he's awake," said Rick returning to his chair. As he lifted his glass to his lips, he asked bluntly, "Don't you? I mean, don't you wanna go out with him? He said he'd love to have a dinner date with you. Why are you interested in me, not him?"

"Because I'm superficial and vain," sighed she.

"I have no idea what you mean by that, but you're not that superficial and vain. A.J. says I'm so shallow no one can drown in the font of my wisdom, not even a baby." That made her giggle. "I still don't understand why you don't wanna go out with him though."

"Because, in addition to being superficial and vain, I'm self-conscious about my looks. I can't speak for the entire female population, but a woman usually wants to look younger, smaller and prettier than her date."

Rick could not help but chuckle and admire her honesty. "I'm shorter than you." He reminded her without mentioning the obvious difference in weight.

"Two out of three ain't so bad." Her flippant reply did not miss a beat.

When their eyes met, they burst into laughter. After it ran its course, they fell into a comfortable silence.

"A.J.'s so lucky to have a brother like you." Pearl said wistfully resuming their conversation after a while.

Rick shrugged. "Yeah, I guess, but he thinks it's the other way around. And you're not doing too shabby either—you have two brothers of your own."

"You don't get it, do you, Rick? I'm the only woman in my family—I'm outnumbered by three to one. I have no sister to have a girl talk with," said she sighing heavily.

"I don't know if having A.J. is any better. We're into different things, and he can be a real pain in the…um, you know what. And the feeling is mutual."

"All siblings fight, but your brother really looks up to you. You've always been there for him when he was going through rough patches."

"Did he say that?" Seeing her nod, he grumbled. "That little bugger. Why doesn't he ever tell me things like that?"

"Because he doesn't have to—deep down you know it. Besides you're guys; men usually hate getting gabby and touchy-feely." She smiled a sad smile. "Us women, on the other hand, love to talk it out regardless of the topic."

Rick had another sip of the moonshine. It went down more smoothly with little burn this time. He figured he was either getting used to it, or getting a little drunk.

"I've always wanted a big sister." Pearl whispered longingly. "When my mother passed away, I was still in my teens. I was devastated and felt like crawling into bed and crying for a month, but instead, I had to take charge of the rest of my family because my brothers were like zombies, and my father went to pieces. He may not be the romantic type, but he really loved my mother—he still does."

She took a swig of the homebrew like it was only iced tea.

After a few moments of languid silence, Rick spoke again, "Yeah, I know what you mean. I was barely into my teens when we lost our dad."

He was vaguely aware that his speech was beginning to slur. _Man, this stuff is pretty heady._

"Mom was still in her thirties, A.J. was just a little kid, and I hadn't gotten the hang of shaving yet, but suddenly, I was thrust into the role of the man of the house. As young as he was, my brother also tried hard to put on a brave face for us, but one morning, on the day of the funeral, I heard him crying in the locked bathroom, and I felt…"

He broke off for a second or two groping for the word he was looking for through an alcoholic haze. He drained the rest of the amber liquid in his glass. It now tasted like beautifully aged single malt scotch.

"…and I was jealous. I wished I could cry my heart out like him, but I couldn't, you know what I mean. I felt like…" He fumbled again. "Like I'd lost my innocence, or the last remnant of my childhood."

When his eyes met with Pearl's, he saw an understanding, not pity, in them and realized he had just told her what no one else knew—not his Corps buddies, not Carlos, not even his own brother. The potent moonshine must have loosened his tongue.

_Yeah, it must be_…

"Yes, I know," said she offering him a sympathetic smile. "A.J. told me."

"_What_?" The revelation left him thunderstruck. "He did?"

She nodded her head. "Yes, he said he remembers that morning clearly—coming out of the bathroom to find you standing there at the door."

At a loss for words, Rick kept staring at Pearl.

"He was afraid you'd get mad at him for crying, or tell him to stop being such a baby, but you didn't. You acted like nothing had happened and put your arm around him to help him get through the day and many more days, weeks, months after that."

"He never tells me anything—except when I do something wrong." He whispered. "That little bugger." He reiterated his sentiment with no trace of malice.

As if on cue, A.J. stirred on his bed and started moaning.

"Rick…?" He whimpered.

"What?"

"I don't feel so good."

"Serves you right for not heeding my advice," said Rick with a grin. "If you think you're gonna be sick, go to the bathroom."

"I'm dizzy. I don't think I can make it by myself." A.J whined pathetically.

"Oh, for crying out loud!"

Pearl observed that while the tone of his voice was rather gruff, Rick was surprisingly gentle when he lifted A.J. up from the bed.

He gleefully needled his brother again for having bitten off more than he could chew.

Watching the pair disappear into the bathroom, she muttered softly into her glass, "Great timing, A.J."

She knew in her heart that the special, intimate connection she had felt between Rick and her was now gone, and that she would never get such tender moments back.

_Here's to the might-have-beens._

She knocked back the rest of her drink and rose from her chair. She left the room without another word to the Simons.


	14. Chapter 14

A.J. was dimly aware that his brother was calling his name but did not want to open his eyes because he had a pounding headache accompanied by nausea—_hangover?_ Rick was trying to wake him up by shaking him, aggravating the discomfort and misery he was in.

"Stop doing that and go away." He managed to mumble feebly turning over on his stomach.

Rick had none of it and grabbed his brother by the collar and pulled him up in a sitting position.

"Hey!" A.J. protested half-heartedly.

"Come on, A.J. Better get up. Breakfast's getting cold as we speak."

Mentioning of food intensified the degree of his discomfort, namely nausea. "I don't think I can eat," he informed Rick assessing his condition. "At least for the next few hours."

"Drink some coffee or something then. Don't hold the Bissers up—they've been waiting for us at the table."

Rick did not let A.J. freshen up and dragged him to the dining room. The Bisser twins gave the Simons a certain look that made them walk a little faster.

Pearl was kind enough to set a cup of hot black coffee and a bottle of aspirin for A.J. He was appreciative of her attentiveness, but being at the table was a sheer torture: sight, sound, smell…

As A.J. cradled his head with a moan, Rick grinned and said, "Oh, come on, A.J. I'm sure you'll be feeling better in no time. And one of these days, you'll be able to look back and laugh at this whole thing."

He waited to see his younger brother's reaction—all he could manage was a half-assed glare.

"Or not." The old saying about revenge being a dish best served cold sounded just about right.

He and Pearl laughed like he had delivered an especially delicious _bon mot_, which made A.J. even more miserable.

Fortunately for A.J., breakfast was a brief affair at the Bisser residence. The twins gulped down the last of their coffee and went out of the house to do more yard work. Pop disappeared into one of the room at the back of the house and returned to the dining room with a white envelope.

"Here." He handed it to A.J. "That's your driver's license."

As A.J. took out his ID from the envelope, a piece of paper fell out.

"An' that's the payment for your service." Pop grinned at the brothers' surprised faces.

"Mr. Bisser, this isn't…"

"What my brother's trying to say is, we appreciate it very much, sir." Rick overrode his brother.

"I wasn't gonna stiff you boys," said Pop. "Job well done."

With that pronouncement, he left the dining room without fanfare to join his sons outside.

Rick got out of his chair and walked with a slight limp to the other side of the table where his brother was seated. He unfolded the white sheet of paper and picked up the check inside.

A.J. saw the itemized statement for the payment neatly written on the paper. Despite the bad headache, he could not help doing some mental calculation and estimated that the check barely covered their minimum fees—minus two cans of gasoline.

Pearl studied the brothers' faces and said, "I know my father's a tightwad, but please understand he's not doing this to slight you."

"No need to apologize, Pearl. It's just that we weren't expecting to be paid, that's all," said A.J. to be tactful.

"As I said before, I'll pay for your expenses and bonus…"

"No, no need for that," said Rick without the slightest hesitation. "You've done enough for us already."

Pearl was quiet for a few moments. "I'm going back to San Francisco tomorrow."

Rick nodded. "We're leaving in two, three days too."

She was hoping he would express his interest in staying another night or offer a ride to the airport, but when none came, she said dejectedly, "I suppose this is good-bye then."

He cocked his head, and A.J. could almost see the wheels turning in his brother's head.

"Hey, before we go, there's something I wanna do if you don't mind."

"Oh, anything at all. What is it?" asked Pearly breathlessly.

"Can I use the bathroom in the master bedroom? I wanna try the tub and the shower."

Rick's request was so unexpected and out of left field, she found herself laughing.

"Of course. I'll get the tub ready and show you how to turn on and off the jets."

Going up the stairs, she was already missing all the giggles and laughs they had shared in the last few days.

About an hour in the tub and the shower, Rick was ready to leave. A.J. had also showered and now felt a little better. They went downstairs together to meet up with Pearl.

"Gimme the keys," said Rick holding out his hand palm up.

"That's okay, I'll drive. You should rest your foot a little longer."

"No, I don't want you to drive. You're too slow to shift going downhill. And my foot's fine."

Rick swiped the keys from A.J.

As they walked to the Power Wagon with Pearl, she tried to slip a check into A.J.'s hand, but Rick intercepted it. The amount of the check was almost five times as much as Pop's.

"Pearl, I told you…"

"Please, Rick. This is the least I can do for you and A.J."

"No. Keep it." Rick said firmly.

"But…"

"We can't accept it, and that's final. You nailed O'Brien and rescued us—remember? Besides, we got paid already."

Pearl pouted, but her frown soon turned upside down into an impish grin. "Well, if we get married, we can deposit it in our joint account and give one half of it to A.J."

"That won't be necessary—that'll be my wedding gift for you two." Following her lead, A.J. ganged up on his brother for fun. He was feeling much better now.

"What're you talking about?" said Rick huffing. "Where did you get the notion that we're getting hitched?"

"Well, you sort of walked in on me when I was getting dressed," smiled Pearl slightly blushing. "My father's very old-fashioned and overprotective, but you know that already, don't you? If he hears that you barged into my room and saw me…"

Before she could finish her sentence, Rick snatched the check from her hand. "Blackmail runs in your family, does it?"

Despite his vehement protest, he shoved the check in his shirt pocket.

Pearl only smiled then said to A.J. "Thank you so much for everything you did for me and being such a sweetheart."

She hugged him and planted a kiss on his cheek. "I'll send you a couple of tickets for my performance at the Met. I hope you'll be able to see it."

"I hope so too," said A.J. smiling back.

She then turned her gaze to Rick again and solemnly announced, "I'd like to thank you properly if I may."

A.J.'s jaw dropped when she kissed his brother full on his lips. A bigger surprise was that he did not resist it—he actually put his arms around her to draw her closer. Their lingering, intimate farewell lasted several seconds.

Breaking off the kiss, which had expressed everything they had wanted to say to each other, they gazed into each other's eyes for there was nothing left to say.

He could still taste her breath mint: _spearmint_.

"Good-bye, Rick," said Pearl sotto voce.

"Yeah…" He whispered.

She then turned around to go back inside, never looking back.

Rick found A.J. staring at him with his mouth hanging open and chuckled to himself. _He looked just like that when he caught me kissing my girlfriend for the first time when I was thirteen or fourteen._

"Did anything happen between you and her last night that I don't know about?"

"Maybe," said Rick, teasing his nosy little brother.

"Well, what happened?"

"That's none of your beeswax."

"It is too if she's going to be my in-law!"

A.J. was not deterred by the brush-off and started his vigorous inquisition.

Rick easily dodged the relentless questioning with his usual flimflam as he settled in the driver seat of his truck.

A.J. tried for several minutes to get Rick to divulge any information about last night but eventually gave up with a pout.

They rode the next few miles in silence.

Some time later, _I Left My Heart in San Francisco_ came on the radio. Softly, Rick started humming along with Tony Bennett's crooning.

"A.J.?"

"Yeah?" A.J. responded eagerly, hoping that Rick would finally fess up.

"Remind me not to plan a vacation in Frisco anytime soon. Okay?"

"Huh?" A.J. didn't know what to make of the remark and eyed his big brother as if he had gone mad.

Rick smiled a wistful, enigmatic smile. With his bewildered sibling by his side, he resumed humming and kept on driving, looking straight ahead.


End file.
